Corrections_Today_July_August_2019_Vol.84_No.4

Communications & Publications

women attempt to adjust to life outside prison if and when they receive parole. In the final chapter, the authors discuss possible changes to the parole system, as well as alternative programs within correctional facilities for lifers in place of the ones they can be denied entry due to their life status. What’s fascinating about this book is how committed the authors are in ensuring that the voices and the personal histories of the women surveyed are properly represented. Throughout the book, Dye and Aday use direct quotations from the women surveyed as they relate to specific matters. While many of the women had their names changed or removed for anonymity, there was still a clear human element as they discussed personal matters like abusive relationships, the loss of loved ones or their dedication to their faith. The authors also added “Case Histories,” where select participants gave detailed explanations of events from their These presented a more raw and compelling perspective, as they allowed the women to go into full details about sensitive matters, such as the grief they felt from losing various family members while they are incarcerated or the years of abuse they suffered at the hands of a controlling and violent partner. past, or the challenges they faced upon arriving to prison.

Subjects are broken down into sub-sections that detail matters and topics that one would not consider when examining lifers. For example, the chapter on grief and loss talks about certain comfort and luxury losses these women suffer when they enter prison, from items as basic as clothes hangers or carpeted floors to losses more intangible like the sound of children. The section on health also dedicates space to discussing the aging lifer population, the various health issues these women face as they spend decades in prison, and the challenges of receiving proper health care. Doing so allows the reader to consider alternatives for lifers for further reforms in correctional facilities. It highlights and gives a voice to a U.S. prison population that doesn’t normally receive as much focus or analysis, and it allows the reader to see the women behind their sentences. While the book does a lot to cover the voices and statistics for the women surveyed, it would also benefit from a wider reach. While the book does offer suggestions for

reform and added standards, it is also contained solely to the facilities in Georgia where the survey was conducted over the last decade. It would also be helpful to the reader if the authors discussed how they could expand on the survey to states with different demographics for its female lifer population or even tried to compare results from the Georgia survey to other areas. It is possible that such an expansion on the study could be done, and it would have helped to have the authors suggest further uses and variations of the survey and study, so that there can be more information to support any proposed reforms. Overall, “Women Lifers” accomplishes what it set out to do. It highlights and gives a voice to a U.S. prison population that doesn’t normally receive as much focus or analysis, and it allows the reader to see the women behind their sentences. It offers a lot of research and information that can be used to suggest reform in various parts of the correctional system, and hopefully it can be used as a source to better understand the lifer population in the U.S. It also has the added value that many of its findings and conclusions can apply to prison populations beyond just the lifer population, so corrections professionals should examine it for findings that will educate them on matters that relate to inmates of all sentence levels. u

74 — July/August 2019 Corrections Today