Winner of the 2014 Division of Women and Crime Distinguished Scholar Award presented by the American Society of Criminology Finalist for the 2013 C. Wright Mills Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of Social Problems Compelling interviews uncover why tough drug policies disproportionately impact women in the American prison system Since the 1980s, when the War on Drugs kicked into high gear and prison populations soared, the increase in women's rate of incarceration has steadily outpaced that of men. As a result, women's prisons in the US have suffered perhaps the most drastically from the overcrowding and recurrent budget crises that have plagued the penal system since harsher drugs laws came into effect. In Breaking Women, Jill A. McCorkel draws upon four years of on-the-ground research in a major US women's prison to uncover why tougher drug policies have so greatly affected those incarcerated there, and how the very nature of punishment in women's detention centers has been deeply altered as a result. Through compelling interviews with prisoners and state personnel, McCorkel reveals that popular so-called "habilitation" drug treatment programs force women to accept a view of themselves as inherently damaged, aberrant addicts in order to secure an earlier release. These programs were created as a way to enact stricter punishments on female drug offenders while remaining sensitive to their perceived feminine needs for treatment, yet they instead work to enforce stereotypes of deviancy that ultimately humiliate and degrade the women. The prisoners are left feeling lost and alienated in the end, and many never truly address their addiction as the programs' organizers may have hoped. A fascinating and yet sobering study, Breaking Women foregrounds the gendered and racialized assumptions behind tough-on-crime policies while offering a vivid account of how the contemporary penal system impacts individual lives.
PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Searching for Red's Self Part I: The End of Rehabilitation1 Getting Tough on Women: How Punishment Changed 2 Taking Over: The Private Company in the Public Prison 3 From Good Girls to Real Criminals: Race Made Visible Part II: The Practice of Habilitation4 The Eyes Are Watching You: Finding the Real Self 5 Diseased Women: Crack Whores, Bad Mothers, and Welfare Queens Part III: Contesting the Boundaries of Self6 Rentin' Out Your Head: Navigating Claims about the Self 7 Unruly Selves: Forms of Prisoner Resistance Conclusion: What If the Cure Is Worse Than the Disease? Notes Bibliography Index About the Author
