Breaking Women: Gender, Race, and the New Politics of Imprisonment
by: Jill A. McCorkel

Softcover. NY, NYU Press, 1st pbk., 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 272 pages. Since the 1980s, when the War on Drugs kicked into high gear and prison populations soared, the increase in women's rate of incarceration has steadily outpaced that of men. As a result, women's prisons in the US have suffered perhaps the most drastically from the overcrowding and recurrent budget crises that have plagued the penal system since harsher drugs laws came into effect. In Breaking Women, Jill A. McCorkel draws upon four years of on-the-ground research in a major US women's prison to uncover why tougher drug policies have so greatly affected those incarcerated there, and how the very nature of punishment in women's detention centers has been deeply altered as a result. Clean copy.