Contemporary Research on crime, prisons, and social control has
largely ignored women. Partial Justice, the only full-scale study
of the origins and development of women's prisons in the United
States, traces their evolution from the late eighteenth century to
the present day. It shows that the character of penal treatment was
involved in the very definition of womanhood for incarcerated
women, a definition that varied by race and social class.
Rafter traces the evolution of women's prisons, showing that it
followed two markedly different models. Custodial institutions for
women literally grew out of men's penitentiaries, starting from a
separate room for women. Eventually women were housed in their own
separate facilities-a development that ironically inaugurated a
continuing history of inmate neglect. Then, later in the nineteenth
century, women convicted of milder offenses, such as morals
charges, were placed into a new kind of institution. The
reformatory was a result of middle-class reform movements, and it
attempted to rehabilitate to a degree unknown in men's prisons.
Tracing regional and racial variations in these two branches of
institutions over time, Rafter finds that the criminal justice
system has historically meted out partial justice to female
inmates. Women have benefited in neither case.
Partial Justice draws in first-hand accounts, legislative
documents, reports by investigatory commissions, and most
importantly, the records of over 4,600 female prisoners taken from
the original registers of five institutions. This second edition
includes two new chapters that bring the story into the present day
and discusses measures now being used to challenge the partial
justice women have historically experienced.
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