ABSTRACT
Nowhere is the marginalization of women more tragic than in the prisons and jails of the United States where a total of 146,000 women were incarcerated in 1999 (Beck, 2000b). Violence, degradation, abuse, and neglect characterize women’s lives in prison today such that only a few women, often with support of the external community of human rights and advocacy groups, are able to resist their denigration and humiliation. We will primarily examine changes that have occurred in the past two decades in the incarceration of women and address issues of classification and assessment, health care, education, employment, family responsibilities, and conditions of incarceration.
