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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.
Preface
Chapter I
Introduction
Chapter II
Women's Interpretations of Criminality before Marriage
Chapter III
Before Arrest: Domestic Life, Male Criminality, and Fast Living
Chapter IV
Before Arrest: Explaining and Accommodating to Male Criminality and Fast Living
Chapter V
Arrests, Lawyers, Courts, and Sentencing
Chapter VI
Stigmatization and Prisoners' Wives' Feelings of Shame
Chapter VII
Marital Relationships Inside: Visiting at the Prison
Chapter VIII
Living Alone
Chapter IX
Repeating the Cycle: Wives' Accommodations to Husbands' Re-Entry
Chapter X
The World of Prisoners' Wives: Conclusions
Appendix A
The Literature
Appendix B
Notes on Research Methodology
Notes
Bibliography
Index