ABSTRACT
This chapter brings together the emerging literature on global feminist perspectives on women’s imprisonment with the rapidly expanding body of research exploring the impacts of imprisonment on women and girls as members of prisoners’ families and as members of urban communities where imprisonment is common. Research on women’s imprisonment is considered alongside research documenting and analyzing the needs and experiences of women and girls as members of the families of both male and female prisoners, focusing on three key themes and identifying global commonalities and differences. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the need for further research and activism, which links work on women, girls, families, and criminal justice with critical perspectives on punishment and the expansion of the prison-industrial complex, to develop radical, critical, and global feminist perspectives that challenge the power of the prison.
