The manuscript that would eventually become this book was completed in December 2009. The author and our friend, Gina Benedict, first began framing her study of women in prison in 2007 – more than 15 years ago. Gina is no longer here with us to integrate new knowledge, from scholars and activists, related to carcerality and abolition, gender and intersections with other anchors of oppression (race, class, age, ability), harm and justice, parenthood, and stories – to name just a few relevant sites of inquiry. Nonetheless, we hope that readers appreciate Gina's incisive analysis and vital insights about women ageing in prison and giving back when one has little to give. In the pages that follow, we briefly comment on the study from the perspective of what Gina taught us and what issues remain quite open. The Appendix offers a compilation of newer publications in line with the topics of the book, as well as some older studies that may be of interest to readers.

On language

A common, ideological trope of criminology is to use the words ‘offender’, ‘inmate’, and ‘prisoner’ more or less interchangeably. Fundamentally, such terms erase the person. In addition, the fact of being in prison is conflated with the idea of having ‘offended’ – indeed, the idea of being an ‘offender’. In her original dissertation/manuscript, Gina followed that convention. (Many of us are guilty of it.) We replaced nearly all such terms with person-first terminology, except when directly quoting a participant or describing previous research.

The terms female and women are likewise taken-for-granted nominalizations. In the space of time since Gina's writing, the two terms have become commonly understood as meaning different things. Relatively speaking, female is tied more to biology, and woman more to identity. Yet, female, used as a noun, is sometimes reductive, even a slur. Recalling our conversations with Gina, we determined that the women who were incarcerated at Pewee Valley and participated in this study self-identified as women. We footnote this information where Gina introduces her participants at the end of Chapter 1. Throughout her work, we have updated wording to reflect the term ‘woman’ versus ‘female’ in most cases.