In Search of Safetytakes a close look at the sources of gendered violence and conflict in women’s prisons. The authors examine how intersectional inequalities and cumulative disadvantages are at the root of prison conflict and violence and mirror the women’s pathways to prison. Women must negotiate these inequities by developing forms of prison capital—social, human, cultural, emotional, and economic—to ensure their safety while inside. The authors also analyze how conflict and subsequent violence result from human-rights violations inside the prison that occur within the gendered context of substandard prison conditions, inequalities of capital among those imprisoned, and relationships with correctional staff. In Search of Safetyproposes a way forward—the implementation of international human-rights standards for U.S. prisons.
Barbara Owen is Professor Emerita at California State University, Fresno.
James Wellsis Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University.
Joycelyn Pollock is Distinguished Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Texas State University.
Acknowledgments
1. Intersectional Inequality and Women’s Imprisonment
2. Pathways and Intersecting Inequality
3. Prison Community, Prison Conditions, and Gendered Harm
4. Searching for Safety through Prison Capital
5. Inequalities and Contextual Conflict
6. Intersections of Inequality with Correctional Staff
7. Gendered Human Rights and the Search for Safety
Appendix 1: Methodology
Appendix 2: Tables of Findings
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
“For decades, Barbara Owen has provided incisive and authentic insights on the incarcerationl