Coming Back to Jail: Women, Trauma, and Criminalization examines how trauma and social inequality shape the lives of incarcerated women. Building on earlier work about women in prison, Elizabeth Comack investigates what has and has not changed for criminalized women over two decades.
Drawing on the stories of forty-two women, the book explores how experiences of abuse, marginalization, and systemic violence intersect with law violations and imprisonment. Rather than treating trauma only as an individual psychiatric diagnosis, Comack frames it as lived experience rooted in a settler-colonial, capitalist, patriarchal society.
Through this lens, the book highlights how social conditions contribute to conflict with the law and how women experience imprisonment in a newer facility. It questions recent efforts to make corrections more "gender responsive," arguing that incarceration remains more punitive than empowering.
Coming Back to Jail is valuable for readers interested in criminology, gender studies, social work, and prison reform, offering a critical perspective on what true healing and meaningful change would require beyond prison walls.
- Life stories of 42 incarcerated women
- Focus on trauma as social and lived experience
- Analysis of gender, power, and incarceration
- Relevant to criminal justice, policy, and advocacy work
