A Woman Doing Life: Notes from a Prison for Women

A Woman Doing Life is the only book that tells stories of women in prison from the inside out. Author and inmate Erin George draws a vivid and uniquely raw portrait of female life in prison, detailing her own responses to incarceration as well as her observations of prison relationships, death and sickness, reactions from friends and family, and even "cooking" in prison. The text also features poignant stories from other female inmates.

Edited by Robert Johnson--esteemed scholar and editor of Victor Hassine's Life Without Parole, Fourth Edition (OUP, 2009)--each chapter of the text opens with a helpful introduction that guides students as they read. An Afterword by noted scholar Joycelyn Pollock further helps place inmate testimonies into an academic context.

Offering profound insight into the too-often neglected issue of women in the criminal justice system, A Woman Doing Life is a must for courses in women and crime, gender and crime, and women in prison.

Erin George is an inmate at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Virginia, where she is serving a life sentence for murder.

Robert Johnson is Professor of Justice, Law, and Society in the School of Public Affairs at American University. He has published extensively on prison and the death penalty, and is the editor of Victor Hassine's Life Without Parole, Fourth Edition (OUP, 2009).