Engendering Resistance: Agency and Power in Women's Prisons

This book explores how power is negotiated in women’s prisons. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in three penal establishments in England, it analyses how women manage the restrictions of imprisonment and the manner in which they attempt to resist institutional control. It is proposed that power is negotiated on a private, individual level, as women often resist the institution simply by trying to maintain an image of control over their own lives. However, their image of themselves as active, ...