Women at the Wall: A Study of Prisoners' Wives Doing Time on the Outside (Suny Series in Critical Issues in Criminal Justice) - Softcover

Fishman, Laura T.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 079140059X ISBN 13: 9780791400593

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1990

Synopsis

Women at the Wall is the first ethnographic study of how the arrest, trial, imprisonment, and release of male criminals affects their families, particularly their wives. It relies on first-person accounts by prisoners' wives, providing details about the changing texture of their marital relationships and the accompanying stigmatization.

From this book we learn about the effects of enforced spousal separation, and the control husbands maintain even during incarceration. We also learn that wives devise ingenious interpretations and explanations regarding their husbands' criminality, and how they attempt to establish stable, conventional lives for themselves while supporting their husbands through the various stages of the criminal justice system.

These women reveal not only their hardships and losses, but also their resourcefulness in coping with their husbands' criminality, their families and friends, and the prison system itself.

About this title

About the Author:

Laura T. Fishman is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Vermont.

About this edition

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 079140059X
• ISBN 13: 9780791400593
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 356