Jailcare

"Thousands of pregnant women pass through our nation's jails every year. What happens to them as they gestate their pregnancies in a space of punishment? Based on ethnographic fieldwork and clinical work as an Ob/Gyn in a women's jail, Carolyn Sufrin explores how, in this time when public safety is in disarray and when incarceration has become a central strategy for managing the poor, jail has become a safety net. Focusing on the experiences of pregnant, incarcerated women as well as on the practices of the jail guards and health providers who care for them, Jailcare describes the contradictory ways that care and maternal identity emerge within a punitive space presumed to be devoid of care. Sufrin argues that jail is not simply a disciplinary institution that serves to punish. Rather, when understood in the context of the poverty, addiction, violence, and racial oppression that characterize these women's lives and their reproduction, jail can become a safety net for women on the margins of society"--Provided by publisher.