In This Place Called Prison: Women's Religious Life in the Shadow of Punishment

In This Place Called Prison offers a vivid account of religious life within an institution designed to punish. Rachel Ellis conducted a year of ethnographic fieldwork inside a U.S. state women's prison, talking with hundreds of incarcerated women, staff, and volunteers. Through their stories, Ellis shows how women draw on religion to navigate lived experiences of carceral control. A trenchant study of religion colliding and colluding with the state in an enduring tension between freedom and constraint, this book speaks to the quest for dignity and light against the backdrop of mass incarceration, state surveillance, and American inequality.

Author: Rachel Ellis
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 04/04/2023
Pages: 280
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.50w x 0.70d
ISBN13: 9780520384545
ISBN10: 0520384547
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Sociology of Religion
- Social Science | Criminology
- Social Science | Women's Studies

About the Author
Rachel Ellis is Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland.