By quadrupling the number of people behind bars in two decades, the United States has become the world leader in incarceration. Much has been written on the men who make up the vast majority of the nationOCOs two million inmates. But what of the women they leave behind? "Doing Time Together" vividly details the ways that prisons shape and infiltrate the lives of women with husbands, fianc(r)s, and boyfriends on the inside. Megan Comfort spent years getting to know women visiting men at San Quentin State Prison, observing how their romantic relationships drew them into contact with the penitentiary. Tangling with the prisonOCOs intrusive scrutiny and rigid rules turns these women into OC quasi-inmates, OCO eroding the boundary between home and prison and altering their sense of intimacy, love, and justice. Yet Comfort also finds that with social welfare weakened, prisons are the most powerful public institutions available to women struggling to overcome untreated social ills and sustain relationships with marginalized men. As a result, they express great ambivalence about the prison and the control it exerts over their daily lives. An illuminating analysis of women caught in the shadow of AmericaOCOs massive prison system, ComfortOCOs book will be essential for anyone concerned with the consequences of our punitive culture."
- ISBN10 0226114686
- ISBN13 9780226114682
- Publish Date 14 May 2014 (first published 1 November 2007)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Pages 275
- Language English