outh. Those women who go on to become inmates usually respond to this abuse by turning to drugs to hide the emotional pain associated with being victimized. Addiction follows and they then turn to crime to support the abuse.
Domestic abuse is also a contributor to the elevation in the number of female inmates in state and Federal prisons. In this regard, O'Keefe (1998) has noted that since the beginning of the 1990s, women offenders in domestic violence cases where they seriously injure or kill their spouses or partners have also been receiving stiffer sentences. This could contribute, at least somewhat, to the increase in the female prisoner population. Interestingly, O'Keefe also connects female violence against men, especially batterers, to childhood sexual abuse and/or physical abuse.
Given the foregoing, it seems reasonable to suggest that the rise in the female prison population is most likely due to, in large measure, women being given stiffer sentences for particular kinds of crime, namely drug abuse and spousal/partner abuse. Further, both of these offenses appear to be associated with these women themselves being abused in childhood/adolescence.
Kinship Networks: Their Nature and Type
Macionis (2004) defines a social network as a group of connections between two or more people based on any variety of relationships. In some cases, the networks are based on marriage and/or blood and these are typically called "kinship networks." However, Morash and Schram (2002) have noted that a distinguishing feature of inmate life in many women's prisons is the formation of "make-believe" or "pseudo-families" which are sometimes referred to in the sociological literature as "prison kinship networks." The authors report that studies of these prison kinship networks have shown that those forming them adopt family roles including the roles of: mother, daughter, sister, husband, and father.
In her discussion of incarcerated ...