Collateral Costs of Imprisonment for Women: Complications of Reintegration

This article examines issues of family separation and community isolation as experienced by women on parole. Qualitative data, based on unstructured, in-depth interviews with 54 former inmates, offer retrospective reflections and current accounts that delineate many of the unintended costs of imprisonment. The narratives portray the difficulties these women experienced in parenting, relationships, and community reintegration. Social stigma and self-shame are important definitional and reactional elements of their efforts to reestablish social bonds. The collateral costs of imprisonment are related to diminished investment in self and others that is created by continued internal and external shaming.

[1]  Margaret E. Martin Msw.  Connected Mothers: A Follow-Up Study of Incarcerated Women and Their Children , 1997 .

[2]  M. Natarajan.  Towards Equality: Women Police in India , 1996 .

[3]  J. Tangney,et al.  Recent Advances in the Empirical Study of Shame and Guilt , 1995 .

[4]  G. P. Falkin,et al.  Assessment of and Services for Substance-Abusing Women Offenders in Community and Correctional Settings , 1995 .

[5]  Richard S. Jones.  Coping with Separation: Adaptive Responses of Women Prisoners , 1993 .

[6]  Lynda Dixon Shaver,et al.  Women Prisoners: A Forgotten Population , 1993 .

[7]  J. Harris.  Comparison of Stressors Among Female vs. Male Inmates , 1993 .

[8]  B. Knight.  Women in Prison as Litigants , 1993 .

[9]  C. F. Hairston,et al.  Mothers in Jail: Parent-Child Separation and Jail Visitation: , 1991 .

[10]  N. Rafter.  Partial Justice: Women in State Prisons, 1800-1935 , 1985 .

[11]  S. K. Datesman,et al.  "I'm Still the Same Mommy": Maintaining the Mother/Child Relationship in Prison , 1983 .

[12]  Brenda G. McGowan,et al.  Why Punish the Children? A Study of Children of Women Prisoners , 1978 .

[13]  R. Glick,et al.  National Study of Women's Correctional Programs. , 1977 .

[14]  B. Werble.  Outsiders Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. , 1966 .

[15]  E. Goffman.  Stigma; Notes On The Management Of Spoiled Identity , 1964 .

[16]  Harold Garfinkel,et al.  Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies , 1956, American Journal of Sociology.

[17]  Julie Jones,et al.  WOMEN IN PRISON , 1939 .

[18]  A. Strauss,et al.  Excerpts from : The Discovery of Grounded Theory : Strategies for Qualitative Research , 2008 .

[19]  Mitchell B. Chamlin,et al.  Shame, Embarrassment, and Formal Sanction Threats: Extending the Deterrence/Rational Choice Model to Academic Dishonesty , 1999 .

[20]  M. Al-Turki,et al.  Women’s Prisons , 1997 .

[21]  James A. Davis,et al.  Constructing social research , 1994 .

[22]  B. Bloom,et al.  Why Punish the Children? A Reappraisal of the Children of Incarcerated Mothers in America , 1993 .

[23]  Edna Erez,et al.  Women, Prison, and Crime , 1992 .

[24]  Harold G. Grasmick,et al.  Conscience, significant others, and rational choice: Extending the deterrence model. , 1990 .

[25]  John Braithwaite,et al.  Crime, Shame, And Reintegration , 1989 .

[26]  J. Braithwaite.  Crime, shame and reintegration: Contents , 1989 .

[27]  K. Scherer,et al.  Relating situation evaluation to emotion differentiation: Nonmetric analysis of cross-cultural questionnaire data. , 1988 .

[28]  I. Moyer.  The Changing roles of women in the criminal justice system : offenders, victims, and professionals , 1985 .

[29]  Z. Henriques.  Imprisoned mothers and their children , 1982 .

[30]  F. Shontz.  Research methods in personality , 1965 .