nal character and a barometer of national decay. The gunslingers and bank robbers of the Old West were both lawbreakers and icons of a new kind of country.
Within that history, female criminals have always held a small but significant place. From the Salem witch trials to Chipita Rodriguez (hanged in 1863 for killing a horse trader, the last woman put to death in America until Karla Faye Tucker was executed in Texas in 1998), Lizzie Borden (acquitted in the courts but not in the public mind), Ma Barker, Lorena Bobbitt, and Tanya Harding, female criminals in America have been colorful, memorable, and rare. According to the U. S. Department of Justice (1999, August 17), nine out of 10 inmates in the nation's prison population are adult males (p. 2). Juveniles and women make up the remaining 10 percent, and, while the number of women has been growing, female inmates still remain a very small part of the total number of prisoners incarcerated in the United States.
Unlike their male counterparts, who represent a broad demographic, women inmates share a number of characteristics (Durham, 1996, pp. 32-33). Since three-quarters or more are mothers, female inmates are likely to require some form of family assistance, especially since most women's prisons either prohibit children from visiting or limit physical contact with prisoners. Because the number of women behind bars represents such a relatively small proportion of the overall prison population, facilities set up to handle women exclusively tend to be located far from the inmates' homes, making family visits even more difficult. Many do not allow children to visit at all, and those that do often force mothers to see their children only through plate glass windows. Overcrowding throughout the prison system in general has severely limited the space available for women's sections in mixed use facilities, and female inmates are therefore dispersed across the country, separated,...