Women Lifers

May 27, 2019
Dye, a first-time author, and Aday (Crime and the Elderly), both sociology professors, deliver a sympathetic if flawed scholarly study about an overlooked portion of the American prison population. The authors’ purpose is “to give voice” to the roughly 4% of female prisoners serving life sentences with the hope of prompting changes in how they are perceived and treated. Using data from questionnaires answered by 214 inmates in Georgia, Dye and Aday note four phenomena of the women’s experience: the prevalence of preexisting abuse, trauma, and mental health issues among respondents; inmates’ concerns about maintaining family relationships while incarcerated, due to the expense and difficulty of contact with people outside; the common use of religious faith as a mechanism for coping with incarceration; and the challenges brought by declining health as they age. The authors have a knack for selecting quotes that evoke compassion (“I’ve lost my individuality; I’m one of the bricks”). The conclusion, calling for more thoughtful and humane treatment of prisoners, flows organically from the data. However, the book’s intended academic audience will find much to pick apart in the lack of racial and class analyses, and casual readers, too, will probably want to look elsewhere for an accessible take on this topic.