ABSTRACT
With the number of incarcerated women rising in the United States, scholarship and activism has focused more explicitly on the backgrounds, criminal contexts, and programming needs of the imprisoned population. This article focuses on motherhood and relies on qualitative life-history interviews with thirty women in a southwestern detention center. The women’s narratives are used to further our understanding 136of the ways in which motherhood (1) resonates with incarcerated women’s self-perceptions, (2) relates to their motivations for crime, and (3) informs therapeutic programming within the carceral 1 environment. In order to address the needs of a critical, yet often ignored, correctional population, we specifically examine the ways in which genderspecific therapeutic approaches may be applied to a jail facility where continuous, in-depth programming may be challenging due to inmate turn-around and unrest. doi:10.1300/J015v29n03_08 [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Website: <https://www. HaworthPress.com> © 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]
