Conclusion

Our Wyoming study offers direct implications for the U.S. prison system, which has reached a new frontier in terms of the sheer number of people incarcerated, on probation or parole, or experiencing the lifelong consequences of a felony conviction. Much like the frontier myth that continues to exercise influence in U.S. politics and dominant culture, mass incarceration is the result of popular acceptance of beliefs that ignore pervasive socioeconomic inequalities. These beliefs encourage the U.S. voting public to endorse addressing deeply rooted social problems, particularly addiction, through criminal justice solutions designed by the politicians they elect. Such is the nature of democracy in a society characterized by ever-widening inequalities between rich and poor, those with stable jobs and contingent workers, where the criminal justice system is fodder for countless films, series, and other entertainment, and where individuals rely far more on electronic communication than on meaningful social interaction. Social isolation and inequality breed fear, and three fear-based beliefs undergird the existence of the criminal justice system in its present form: drug-abusing women are a threat to public safety, law breaking is an individual choice rather than a community problem, and women released from prison pose a long-term risk to society.

On the Radar

This chapter explores the various forms of state, community, and interpersonal surveillance women experience during and after their incarceration to emphasize how women actively manage prison’s complex social world before transitioning to less intense, but still salient, forms of social scrutiny after their release. This chapter’s central argument is that rural life in remote areas offers women few opportunities to start over after their incarceration. Uniting the experiences of all five composite characters, this chapter discusses how women navigate gendered forms of rural social control and surveillance before, during, and after their time in prison. It documents the social organization of relationships among women in the prison, some of which present a chance for the women to critically examine or otherwise reconsider the competing narratives about their lives and choices. The chapter analyzes how the women’s caregiving obligations, particularly to their minor children, are both a source of motivation for making significant life changes and generators of financial and psychological stress prior to and after their incarceration. And it documents the parole and other stipulations the women confront following their release into the community and the special set of challenges facing women who have had multiple prison stays.

Violence Has Flow

This chapter’s central argument is that gender norms and geographic isolation discourage rural women in abusive relationships from seeking help. Focusing particularly on the experiences of “Janea,” who murdered her oil worker husband after a lifetime of abuse ignored by her small-town community, and “Itzel,” who was pregnant when she traveled with her baby’s father to Wyoming and assaulted a man with a tire iron in a drug deal gone wrong, this chapter discusses how women situate their understandings of these violent dynamics within the physically harsh, geographically isolated terrain in which they almost always lived before coming to, and to which they generally plan to return after, prison. It explores how heteronormative frontier gender norms set a tone very early in life that can trap women in cycles of abuse and neglect that they can feel powerless to stop. The chapter analyzes intimate partner violence as part of struggles with addiction and substance abuse, a result of limited social capital, and the product of problem-solving strategies learned earlier in life. And it documents incarcerated women’s efforts to engage in relationship-related perspectival shifts, including the symbolic weight with which some women view mothering as a lifeline to the future.

A Productive Member of Society

This chapter argues that the women must navigate socio-institutional and moral beliefs that deny their everyday realities. Focusing particularly on the experiences of “Dakota,” a thirty-four-year-old convicted of a financial crime she committed while struggling to save her family’s ranch, it elaborates the socioeconomic challenges rural women face before and after going to prison, with newly intensified versions of these struggles often following their release. It narrates how the women describe their attempts, successes, and failures at meeting their individually valued ways of working, living, and finding meaning in the world. It explores the women’s economic situations prior to prison, which often involved significant debt, childcare responsibilities, and restricted or nonexistent possibilities for earning a living wage. It then follows women through their everyday routines in prison as they work, participate in programming and classes, and begin to formulate plans for their futures. And it analyzes how women attempt to navigate reentry, when felony conviction–related stigma adds to the challenges they face as women in rural areas where male-dominated jobs in the resource-extraction fields generally exclude them and service-sector work does not pay a living wage.

Hitting Rock Bottom

This chapter addresses the addiction and mental health trajectories that led a significant number of women to prison. It elucidates how, for some women, prison offered their first real opportunity to receive sustained medical and other therapeutic treatment for substance abuse and mental health issues. This situation complements the chapter’s central argument that rural social control mechanisms uniquely criminalize and stigmatize women’s substance abuse and mental health issues while discouraging help seeking. Focusing particularly on the experiences of “Tammi,” a nineteen-year-old serving a relatively short drug-related sentence and whose “outlaw family” includes many individuals incarcerated in Wyoming jails and prisons, the chapter details the socio-conceptual organization of available addictions treatment within and outside the prison’s extremely isolated Wyoming context. The chapter explores the social and interpersonal organization of the prison’s Intensive Treatment Unit, a separate housing unit that adheres to the therapeutic community model. It examines the social and conceptual organization of other prison therapeutic groups organized by prison staff, volunteers, and the women themselves. This chapter also documents “Nedrah’s” journey through one of the many approaches to reentry taken by the women in their attempts to maintain sobriety and avoid individuals and places that contributed to their addictions.

Introduction

The introduction opens by articulating the four components comprising the architecture of gendered violence that frames the lives of currently and formerly incarcerated Wyoming women. Each of these four components is then the focus of its own chapter. After also introducing the five composite characters who serve as narrative anchors for the analysis presented throughout the book, the introduction sets out the book’s core argument that unique rural cultural dynamics surrounding addiction, poverty, fraught interpersonal relationships, and felony-related discrimination shape women’s experiences of incarceration and release from prison. It reviews how the theoretical construct of the architecture of gendered violence engages with and builds on work pioneered by feminist, rural, and narrative criminologists as well as studies from a range of academic disciplines on rural poverty and other forms of economic precarity. It then compares the unique social and demographic dynamics of the Wyoming women’s prison to other women’s prisons nationwide, attending closely to the structures of incarcerated women’s everyday routines. The introduction concludes with a thorough evaluation of the way rural sociocultural norms and social structures create special considerations for both research participants and those of us who live and work in rural contexts where we also conduct research.