Women's Imprisonment: A Study in Social Control

First published in 1983, Women’s Imprisonment explores the meanings of women’s imprisonment and, in particular, the wider meanings of the ‘moment’ of prison.

Based on officially sponsored research in Cornton Vale, Scotland’s only women’s prison, the book makes extensive use of interviews with sheriffs, policemen, and social workers, as well as observation in the prisons, the courts, and the lodging-houses. The author quotes from interviews with women recidivist prisoners, the judges who sen...