Oklahoma has long held the dubious honor of having the highest female incarceration rate in the country, nearly twice the national average. In this compelling new book, sociologist Susan Sharp sets out to discover just what has gone so wrong in the state of Oklahoma--and what that might tell us about trends in female incarceration nationwide.
The culmination of over a decade of original research, "Mean Lives, Mean Laws" exposes a Kafkaesque criminal justice system, one that has no problem with treating women as collateral damage in the War on Drugs or with stripping female prisoners of their parental rights. Yet it also reveals the individual histories of women who were jailed in Oklahoma, providing intimate portraits of their lives before, during, and after their imprisonment. We witness the impoverished and abusive conditions in which many of these women were raised; we get a vivid portrait of their everyday lives behind bars; and we glimpse the struggles that lead many ex-convicts to fall back into the penal system.
Through an innovative methodology that combines statistical rigor with extensive personal interviews, Sharp shows how female incarceration affects not only individuals, but also families and communities. Putting a human face on a growing social problem, "Mean Lives, Mean Laws" raises important questions about both the state of Oklahoma and the state of the nation.

"Sharp's book reemphasizes the tremendous costs of maintaining the death penalty--costs to real people and real families that ripple throughout generations to come."--Saundra D. Westervelt, author of Shifting the Blame: How Victimization Became a Criminal Defense "Everyone concerned with the effects of capital punishment must have this book."--Margaret Vandiver, professor, department of criminology and criminal justice, University of Memphis Murderers, particularly those sentenced to death, are considered by most to be unusually heinous, often sub-human, and entirely different from the rest of us. In Hidden Victims, sociologist Susan F. Sharp challenges this culturally ingrained perspective by reminding us that those individuals facing a death sentence, in addition to being murderers, are brothers or sisters, mothers or fathers, daughters or sons, relatives or friends. Through a series of vivid and in-depth interviews with families of the accused, she demonstrates how the exceptionally severe way in which we view those on death row trickles down to those with whom they are closely connected. Sharp shows how family members and friends--in effect, the indirect victims of the initial crime--experience a profoundly complicated and socially isolating grief process. Departing from a humanist perspective from which most accounts of victims are told, Sharp makes her case from a sociological standpoint that draws out the parallel experiences and coping mechanisms of these individuals. Chapters focus on responses to sentencing, the particular structure of grieving faced by this population, execution, aftermath, wrongful conviction, family formation after conviction, and the complex situation of individuals related to both the killer and the victim. Powerful, poignant, and intelligently written, Hidden Victims challenges all of us--regardless of which side of the death penalty we are on--to understand the economic, social, and psychological repercussions that shape the lives of the often forgotten families of death row inmates. Susan F. Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma.

Oklahoma has long held the dubious honor of having the highest female incarceration rate in the country, nearly twice the national average. In this compelling new book, sociologist Susan Sharp sets out to discover just what has gone so wrong in the state of Oklahoma--and what that might tell us about trends in female incarceration nationwide.
The culmination of over a decade of original research, "Mean Lives, Mean Laws" exposes a Kafkaesque criminal justice system, one that has no problem with treating women as collateral damage in the War on Drugs or with stripping female prisoners of their parental rights. Yet it also reveals the individual histories of women who were jailed in Oklahoma, providing intimate portraits of their lives before, during, and after their imprisonment. We witness the impoverished and abusive conditions in which many of these women were raised; we get a vivid portrait of their everyday lives behind bars; and we glimpse the struggles that lead many ex-convicts to fall back into the penal system.
Through an innovative methodology that combines statistical rigor with extensive personal interviews, Sharp shows how female incarceration affects not only individuals, but also families and communities. Putting a human face on a growing social problem, "Mean Lives, Mean Laws" raises important questions about both the state of Oklahoma and the state of the nation.