reformatories for women

In 1920s Chicago, night club sensation Velma Kelly and fame-hungry Roxie Hart find themselves on death row together--Velma for murdering her husband and sister after catching them in bed together, Roxie for murdering the man who tricked her into thinking he could make her famous--and compete for the same fame that will keep them from hanging.

It's 2003 and Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility, deep in California's Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed: the San Francisco of her youth and her young son, Jackson. Inside is a new reality: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive; the bluffing and pageantry and casual acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike; and the deadpan absurdities of institutional living.

The author tells of her fifteen-month experience while she was incarcerated in the infamous federal corrections institute in Danbury, Connecticut. A well-heeled Smith College alumnus, Piper Kerman had made a serious mistake which led to her arrest and experience with the American penal system. She met women from all walks of life who surprised her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of acceptance. Heartbreaking, hilarious and also enraging, her story offers a rare look into the lives of women in prison.

The author provides an account of her thirteen months in a minimum security correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, where she was sent after being convicted on a ten-year-old charge of drug smuggling and money laundering in 2003, offering insights into the heirarchies, communities, and friendships that characterize the women's prison.

This book includes a comprehensive history of women in prison, an examination of issues and controversies that affect women in prison, accounts of women describing in their own words how it feels to be incarcerated, and annotated lists of print and nonprint resources on women's imprisonment.

Charlee Cox is a spoiled, second-generation prison guard in a minimum-security prison for women. His mother is the warden. She knows her bachelor son is up to something in her prison, but she needs proof before he ruins his life and hers.

While prison psychiatrist Louise Forrest tries to help female inmate Helen--who blames the voices in her head for the murders of her children and believes that Hollywood starlet Angie Mills is her sister--she copes with her own problems with the actress, who coincidentally is dating her ex-husband and caring for her son.

When Jennifer agrees to take the rap for her boss, a Wall Street player who has broken SEC rules, she expects her lawyer fianc? to get her off easily. Instead she finds herself behind bars at the Jennings Correctional Facility for Women and dealing with her unusual fellow inmates.

Cristina Rathbone recounts the experiences she had while observing life for inmates in MCI-Framingham, the oldest operating women's prison in the United States.