The carceral experiences of women serving life sentences.
How do women -
mothers, daughters, aunts, nieces and grandmothers - make sense of
judgment to a lifetime behind bars? In Women Doing Life, Lora
Bex Lempert presents a typology of the ways that life-sentenced women
grow and self-actualize, resist prison definitions, reflect on and
"own" their criminal acts, and ultimately create meaningful
lives behind prison walls. Looking beyond the explosive headlines
that often characterize these women as monsters, Lempert offers rare
insight into this vulnerable, little studied population. Her gendered
analysis considers the ways that women "do crime"
differently than men and how they have qualitatively different
experiences of imprisonment than their male counterparts. Through
in-depth interviews with 72 women serving life sentences in Michigan,
Lempert brings these women back into the public arena, drawing
analytical attention to their complicated, contradictory, and yet
compelling lives.
Women Doing Life
focuses particular attention on how women cope with their no-exit
sentences and explores how their lifetime imprisonment catalyzes
personal reflection, accountability for choices, reconstruction of
their stigmatized identities, and rebuilding of social bonds. Most of
the women in her study reported childhoods in environments where
violence and disorder were common; many were victims before they were
offenders. Lempert vividly illustrates how, behind the prison gates,
life-serving women can develop lives that are meaningful, capable
and, oftentimes, even ordinary. Women Doing Life shows both
the scope and the limit of human possibility available to women
incarcerated for life.