Negotiating the Prison-Family Interface From the Inside: Experiences of Incarcerated Mothers, Daughters, and Wives/ Girlfriends

• In Event: Women, Crime and Justice: Gendered Experiences and Perceptions

Abstract

Women’s rates of incarceration have increased more rapidly than men’s during our contemporary era of mass imprisonment in the US. This paper considers the nexus of where the institutions of prison and family meet in shaping incarcerated women’s experiences. Qualitative data on women’s experiences describe a theme of negotiating the intersection of prison and family in their daily lives while incarcerated. This study uses two sources of qualitative data. First, detailed narratives were gathered on women’s experiences from a series of open-ended questions embedded on survey questionnaires administered to a sample of incarcerated women in a minimum security prison (n=210). Second, in a sequential design, I conducted face-to-face interviews with a subsample of 36 women who also participated in the survey component of the study. I use qualitative data from both sources of data to detail women’s experiences in their various roles as mothers, daughters, and wives/girlfriends. Emergent themes include caregiving concerns and experiences, maternal identities, and the experience and strains of navigating family roles while imprisoned. My sample is comprised of Hispanics, African Americans, Whites and women of other race/ethnicities. I attend to similarities and differences in women’s lived experiences across race and ethnic groups.

Author

• Holly Foster, Texas A&M University