Lecinda Marie Yevchak, Thesis Supervisor Stacy Silver, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
female inmate perceived severity family ties relationships friendships social networks sentence length qualitative interviews
Abstract:
Imprisonment is a varied experience depending on the individual and their personal characteristics. Female inmates are a significantly rising portion of our prison population today (Islam, Banarjee, and Khatum 2014). With that in mind, it is important to understand female experiences in prison and the overall severity of their experience. Female inmates have been an ignored segment of the prison population for a long time and research has not paid much attention to their experiences in contrast to male inmates (Islam, Banarjee, and Khatum 2014). In this thesis, I have used an existing dataset consisting of female inmates to explore how 1) family ties and relationships, 2) friendships and social networks, and 3) sentence length all have an impact on the female inmate’s perceived severity of imprisonment. The data being utilized consists of qualitative interviews from female inmates, where they were asked an array of questions about their prison experience, life after prison, and health to name a few.
