How Women Cope with Incarceration

This book presents original research on how incarcerated women adjust to and cope with imprisonment. Although women have been the fastest-growing prison population in the United States for several decades, their experiences remain understudied. Greater attention is needed to the unique challenges women face in prison, including their physical needs, histories of trauma, gendered pathways to criminality, and motherhood. This monograph contributes to our understanding of incarcerated women and the ways they cope with imprisonment.

Based on 42 interviews with incarcerated women and grounded in the Lazarus and Folkman model of stress and coping, the author examines how women respond to prison deprivations and separation from their children and families. The narrative interviews are supplemented by analysis of a self-administered survey, a prison handbook, and observations. The author proposes a novel gendered framework of coping and coping strategies that emerged from the interview data. Using a feminist grounded theory approach, the author identified Staying Focused as a central coping strategy and argues that women demonstrate remarkable resilience in the face of significant adversity. Staying Focused appears as the main approach to prison’s constraints and deprivations, the need for survival and safety, and for ensuring release from prison. By proposing this framework, the author underlines the gendered aspect of imprisonment, addresses the uniqueness of women’s experiences, and proposes practical solutions and programs that are relevant to women in prison and their families and communities.

This book will inform academics, policy makers, community advocates, and activists, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in social science courses on correctional policy, gender and crime, and social work.