A groundbreaking collective work of history by a group of
incarcerated scholars that resurrects the lost truth about the first
women’s prison
“Inmates at America’s oldest women’s prison are writing a
history of it—and exploding the myth of its benevolent founders.”
—Slate
A Ms. Magazine Most
Anticipated Book
What if prisoners were to write the history of their own prison? What
might that tell them—and all of us—about the roots of the system
that incarcerates so many millions of Americans?
In this groundbreaking and revelatory volume, a group of incarcerated
women at the Indiana Women’s Prison have assembled a chronicle of
what was originally known as the Indiana Reformatory Institute for
Women and Girls, founded in 1873 as the first totally separate prison
for women in the United States. In an effort that has already made
the national news, and which was awarded the Indiana History
Outstanding Project for 2016 by the Indiana Historical Society, the
Indiana Women’s Prison History Project worked under conditions of
sometimes-extreme duress, excavating documents, navigating draconian
limitations on what information incarcerated scholars could see or
access, and grappling with the unprecedented challenges stemming from
co-authors living on either side of the prison walls.
With contributions from ten incarcerated or formerly incarcerated
women, the result is like nothing ever produced in the historical
literature: a document that is at once a shocking revelation of the
roots of America’s first prison for women, and also a meditation on
incarceration itself. Who Would
Believe a Prisoner? is a book that will be read and
studied for years to come as the nation continues to grapple with the
crisis of mass incarceration.
