eBook - PDF

Doing Time Together

Name: Doing Time Together
ISBN: 9780226114682

Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison

Megan Comfort,

English
PDF
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - PDF

Doing Time Together

Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison

Megan Comfort,

About this book

By quadrupling the number of people behind bars in two decades, the United States has become the world leader in incarceration. Much has been written on the men who make up the vast majority of the nation's two million inmates. But what of the women they leave behind? Doing Time Together vividly details the ways that prisons shape and infiltrate the lives of women with husbands, fiancés, and boyfriends on the inside.

Megan Comfort spent years getting to know women visiting men at San Quentin State Prison, observing how their romantic relationships drew them into contact with the penitentiary. Tangling with the prison's intrusive scrutiny and rigid rules turns these women into "quasi-inmates," eroding the boundary between home and prison and altering their sense of intimacy, love, and justice. Yet Comfort also finds that with social welfare weakened, prisons are the most powerful public institutions available to women struggling to overcome untreated social ills and sustain relationships with marginalized men. As a result, they express great ambivalence about the prison and the control it exerts over their daily lives.

An illuminating analysis of women caught in the shadow of America's massive prison system, Comfort's book will be essential for anyone concerned with the consequences of our punitive culture.

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Yes, you can access Doing Time Together by Megan Comfort in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Criminology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Year

2009

Print ISBN

9780226114637, 9780226114620

eBook ISBN

Topic

Subtopic

Index

O

U

T

S

I

D

E

T

H

E

P

R

I

S

O

N

WA

L

L

S

3

thousand 

men

incarcerated 

there. 

My

primary 

duty 

was

to

coordinate 

an

HIV-prevention 

intervention 

designed 

for

women 

with 

incarcerated 

male 

partners, 

a

program 

that 

took 

place 

directly 

outside 

the

prison 

gates 

in

a

house 

owned 

by

the

nonproﬁt 

organization, 

which 

served 

as

the

San

Quentin 

visiting 

center. 

My

efforts 

to

conduct 

health 

edu-

cation 

and

program 

evaluation 

were 

routinely 

interspersed 

with 

the

provision 

of

the

more 

mundane 

services 

offered 

by

the

visiting 

center: 

lending 

clothes 

to

people 

who

were 

“inappropriately” 

dressed 

for

their 

visits, 

caring 

for

children 

whose 

mothers 

could 

not

or

did

not

want 

to

bring 

them 

onto 

the

prison 

grounds, 

and

explaining 

the

intricate 

visit-

ing

policies 

and

procedures 

to

newcomers.

When 

I

accepted 

the

job

with 

the

nonproﬁt 

I

had

long 

been 

inter-

ested 

in

working 

in

a

prison 

without 

working 

for

a

prison. 

Being 

at

the

visiting 

center 

seemed 

an

ideal 

stepping-stone 

toward 

what 

I

really 

as-

pired 

to

do—ﬁnd 

a

position 

where 

the

action 

was, 

as

it

were, 

“on 

the

Figure 

1.1

Sign 

at

front 

gate 

of

San

Quentin

Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Outside the Prison Walls
2 “On-Line” at San Quentin
3 “We Share Everything We Can the Best Way We Can”
4 “Papa’s House”: The Prison as Domestic Satellite
5 “It’s a Lot of Good Men behind Walls!”
6 The Long Way Home
Appendix 1: Setting and Methods
Appendix 2: An Orientation to the Research Literature
Appendix 3: United States Carceral Population, 1980–2000
Appendix 4: Field Documents
References
Index

About this book

Frequently asked questions

Information

Table of contents