ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews research on women's prisons, both foundational and contemporary cultural configurations, highlights intersectional junctures including race/ethnicity, class, and sexuality. It offers a compilation of studies depicting institutional linkages between women's prison culture and universal structures of patriarchal power. The task of focusing on culture in women's prisons is not as straightforward as it may seem. General cultural studies have been informed by the Birmingham School tradition, relating cultural practices to broader systems of power; and the Chicago School, focusing on subgroups and "outsiders". In the midst of the women's movement in the US, a trifecta of now-classic studies on women's prisons emerged. The first is Ward and Kassebaum's study of women at the high-security California Institution for Women, Frontera. Leading feminist scholars conclude that researchers must continue to out-turn critical work, revealing power dynamics that allow vulnerable and voiceless women prisoners to remain largely invisible and the brunt of punitive policies.
