Mean Lives, Mean Laws - (Critical Issues in Crime and Society) by Susan F Sharp (Paperback)

About the Book

Oklahoma has long held the dubious honor of having the highest female incarceration rate in the country, nearly twice the national average. Mean Lives, Mean Laws puts a human face on this alarming statistic, revealing the troubled backgrounds and harsh laws that lead so many Oklahoman women to commit crimes. Drawn from over a decade of first-hand research, the book provides a rigorous analysis of the criminal justice system, yet also gives voice to the women locked within it.

Book Synopsis

Oklahoma has long held the dubious honor of having the highest female incarceration rate in the country, nearly twice the national average. In this compelling new book, sociologist Susan Sharp sets out to discover just what has gone so wrong in the state of Oklahoma-and what that might tell us about trends in female incarceration nationwide.

The culmination of over a decade of original research, Mean Lives, Mean Laws exposes a Kafkaesque criminal justice system, one that has no problem with treating women as collateral damage in the War on Drugs or with stripping female prisoners of their parental rights. Yet it also reveals the individual histories of women who were jailed in Oklahoma, providing intimate portraits of their lives before, during, and after their imprisonment. We witness the impoverished and abusive conditions in which many of these women were raised; we get a vivid portrait of their everyday lives behind bars; and we glimpse the struggles that lead many ex-convicts to fall back into the penal system.

Through an innovative methodology that combines statistical rigor with extensive personal interviews, Sharp shows how female incarceration affects not only individuals, but also families and communities. Putting a human face on a growing social problem, Mean Lives, Mean Laws raises important questions about both the state of Oklahoma and the state of the nation.

Review Quotes

"No one is better poised to write a scholarly book on incarcerated women and no state is more appropriate to study than Oklahoma. Mean Lives, Mean Laws is historically, theoretically, and methodologically remarkable. But even more importantly, the self-reported rates and words of real incarcerated women about their harsh lives before, in, after, and sometimes upon re-entry to prison are powerful testimonies to how the U.S. system is fundamentally flawed in responding to women and girls as victims and offenders."--Joanne Belknap "author of The Invisible Woman: Gender, Crime, and Justice" (4/15/2014 12:00:00 AM)

"Sharp is a leading expert on women in prison and she continues her record of outstanding scholarship with this work. Mean Lives, Mean Laws will make a much needed contribution to policy studies of criminology and criminal justice." --Barbara Owen "author of In the Mix: Struggle and Survival in a Women's Prison" (8/27/2013 12:00:00 AM)

"Sharp truly cares about incarcerated women and has devoted her life to convincing state bureaucrats to reform the ways they are treated in Oklahoma, possibly the most conservative state in the union and definitely the one with the highest rate of female incarceration."-- "Women's Review of Books"

About the Author

SUSAN F. SHARP is the David Ross Boyd Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma. Co-Chair of the Oklahoma Legislative Task Force on Children of Incarcerated Parents, she has written over thirty articles, as well as the book Hidden Victims: Effects of the Death Penalty on Families of the Accused (Rutgers University Press, 2005).