Daughters of Christ in the D.O.C.: How Religion Matters for Incarcerated Women

• In Event: Correctional Programming

Abstract

Today, women account for 7% of the total prison population, yet scholarship on women’s prison life remains scarce. Drawing upon 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a state women’s prison, I find that religion is crucial to women’s experience of prison life. Central to many inmates’ daily activities, religion impacts their freedoms and privileges within prison walls by providing material benefits, social outcomes, and an alternative framework for interpreting incarceration. Conversely, given the limited availability of equivalent secular programs, non-religious inmates experience greater prison deprivations. This study updates existing prison literature, which has neglected the key role of religion in the social order of prisons. Given federal legislation supporting religious freedom in corrections, direct implications for criminal justice policy include evaluating voluntary programming to ensure a fair distribution of resources across both religious and secular programs.

Author

• Rachel Ellis, University of Pennsylvania