Too much time

This is a documentary survey of the experience of women in prison by the award-winning photojournalist Jane Evelyn Atwood. Since 1980 the numbers of women in US prisons have increased tenfold. Similar statistics apply to the nine other countries around the world where Atwood has succeeded in penetrating the prison systems – photographing, interviewing women prisoners and their guards, gathering testimony. The result is a raw and moving account in words and pictures of society’s attitude to the issues of women, crime and incarceration. The book raises questions about the relative treatment of men and women in prison and about the links between women’s crimes and male violence. But more than a campaigning photo story, the book assembles an extraordinary body of experience. As Kathy Boudin, a teacher and writer imprisoned since 1981, comments: “as women in prison, we tell stories to each other – sitting in our cells, walking in the prison yard, in parenting groups – but we urgently need our stories to be heard beyond the walls and the razor wire. This book takes the reader into the lives of women in prison as they reflect on personal responsibility and social realities, guilt and reparation, change, loss and survival. It is in the power of prisoners’ voices that the complex truth emerges.”