Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons ed. by Robin Levi and Ayelet Waldman (review)

Steel bars and concrete walls of prisons across America are peeled back in new ways as editors Robin Levi and Ayelet Waldman invite the reader of Inside This Place, Not of It on an intimate, insightful, and intense journey into the lives of women in prisons in the United States. Over thirty individuals formerly or currently in prisons throughout the United States were interviewed over the course of ten months, with many being interviewed more than once. The stories of eight formerly imprisoned and five currently imprisoned women are compiled to create this collection of narratives.

Today there are over 2.3 million people in the prison system in the United States, with women comprising the fastest growing segment of the prison population, primarily as a result of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes, a dismantling of the US mental health system, and increased prosecution for crimes of poverty and survival. The US Department of Justice reports that two-thirds of women in prison have experienced physical and sexual abuse at some point in their lives, reminding us that women prisoners are among those most vulnerable to all forms of abuse. Inside This Place, Not of It provides intimate access behind the statistics to expose previously hidden stories of pain, abuse, inadequate health care, and other problems within prisons.

Levi and Waldman’s introduction describes the complexities and challenges of entering the prisons to conduct the interviews; the temperamental nature of those in authority often caused requested visits to be denied. Although it is not made fully clear in their brief methodological notations, it is likely that conducting oral histories among persons who are currently imprisoned created additional challenges that influenced the method of collecting and processing the narratives from transcripts to the final stories. With two exceptions noted by the editors—one that was the result of letters and one brief phone call, and another that was a compilation including a previous interview—the reader is left wondering whether the stories presented might be the result of significant editing. This question arises as a result of the singularity of the voice and the cleanness of the narratives. As all of the stories read, the raw power of the unedited voice of these women is missing.

Individual chapters comprise the stories of thirteen women who openly share their lives with the reader in ways that provide a glimpse into the choices that led to their imprisonment. Coming from differing backgrounds, women who are young and old, black, white, and Native American, recount recurring experiences of physical and sexual abuse, abandonment by parents and loved ones, suppression of pain through alcohol and drugs, limited education, depression, suicide attempts, being taken advantage of by men, inadequate health care in prisons, post-traumatic stress disorder, and retaliation by persons in power in prison. In story after story, from Pennsylvania to Michigan to California, the similarity and repetitive nature of their experiences may unfortunately lead the reader to want to disengage midway. Although the editors make it clear these stories are not representative of the larger population of women prisoners because they did not have access to women in city and county jails, it is hard to deny the power of the stories in highlighting the need for systemic changes within prisons and the need for programs outside of prisons to prevent both initial entry and recidivism. As a sign of hope, many of the women interviewed both inside and outside of prison have started programs or organizations designed to help women and girls avoid the choices that can lead to imprisonment and to develop a better understanding of who they are despite their current condition of imprisonment.

Michelle Alexander’s forward and Levi and Waldman’s introduction discuss the gross disparities in the racial composition within prisons, including noting that 34...