Summary
This study explores the attitudes, perceptions and experiences of women in two prisons in California. The study includes both a temporal component comparing women's experiences in one prison in the early 1960s and the mid-1990s, and a comparative institutional component, comparing women's experiences in two different prisons operating in the social and policy milieu of the mid-1990s. It analyzes surveys of inmates and secondary data collected from official records, archives, and an earlier study of women in prison in California. The study portrayed women's reactions to prison as a function of (1) inmates' pre-prison characteristics, (2) characteristics of inmates' prison careers, (3) institutional structures and processes, (4) crime control ideologies and policies, (5) public attitudes toward crime and criminals, and (6) women's roles, opportunities, and lifestyles in the wider society. Closed-ended questions were developed for the survey designed to measure (1) the most difficult aspects of doing time, (2) the specific problems of prison life, (3) the various types of inmates and inmate relations, and (4) the nature of inmate-staff relations. The survey also included questions based on measures and scales used in penology research and the survey initially administered by Ward and Kassebaum to women prisoners in the 1960s. Demographic questions included age, ethnicity, if born in the United States, length of residence in the United States, marital status, and education.
Citation
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Funding
National Science Foundation. Law and Social Sciences Program (SBR-9617285)
Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit
prisons
Restrictions
A set of 70 interviews that were conducted with inmates are not publicly available.
Study Design
Survey made up of closed ended questions.
Sample
Surveys of the entire prison population excluding women in the secure housing units and mental health units. At Prison 1, 1,224 surveys were distributed by the principal investigators to the inmates and 940 were returned and usable; at Prison 2, 2500 surveys were left and distributed by the prison staff and 933 were returned in a usable format.
Universe
The entire prison population of two prisons in California, excluding women in the secure housing units and mental health units.
Unit(s) of Observation
individual
survey data
Mode of Data Collection
self-enumerated questionnaire
Description of Variables
The data file contains variables that measure: opinions about the direction of laws, opinions about the effects of the three strikes law, any good that came from doing time, aspects of prison that are hard to adjust to, ways staff have helped prisoners, annoying aspects of doing time, inmates experiences and actions, ease of inmates getting items, ease of buying favors, toughness of punishment, sociodemographics, jobs held, and how Prison 1 changed over time.
Response Rates
Prison 1: 77 percent response rate. Prison 2: 37 percent response rate.
Original Release Date
2011-10-27
Version Date
2011-10-27
Version History
2011-10-27 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
Data in this collection are available only to users at ICPSR member institutions.
This study is provided by ICPSR. ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.