Join us when author Bonnie L. Ernst shares her new book, an examination of how the feminist movements in the late twentieth century ignited prison protests, activism, and reform in women's prisons.

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About the Book

An examination of how the feminist movements in the late twentieth century ignited prison protests, activism, and reform in women's prisons.

While the late twentieth century brought about greater rights for women, it also saw a rapid increase in the number of female prisoners. Before their confinement, many incarcerated women had gained access to work and higher education. But once behind bars, they found the only programs available for them perpetuated misogynistic norms.

Challenging Confinement is about how incarcerated women incorporated strategies from feminist movements into their activism behind bars. Facing long sentences, overcrowded prisons, and a lack of rehabilitation programs, incarcerated women protested, organized, and filed lawsuits to advocate for gender and racial equality in prison. Drawing on prison grievance reports, oral histories, state archives, and private collections, Bonnie L. Ernst tells the story of how women's movements, beginning in the 1920s and ending in the era of mass incarceration, infused prison activism in Michigan with new energy. Female prisoners and attorneys successfully persuaded the federal court to force state prisons to offer more programming and access to legal services.

Mass incarceration swallowed up many of those efforts, but this history demonstrates how core principles of women's movements encouraged incarcerated women to form coalitions and challenge their jailers. By bringing together histories of race, gender, and punishment, Challenging Confinement reveals how incarcerated women worked together to resist, in an era of mass imprisonment.

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https://www.schulerbooks.com/b...

About the Author:

Bonnie Ernst is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Indiana University. She is a historian of gender, race, and punishment in the United States. Her first book, Challenging Confinement: Mass Incarceration and the Fight for Equality in Women’s Prisons (NYU Press, 2023), analyzes how twentieth-century women’s movements sparked protest, organizing, and reform that was led by incarcerated women and coalitions of attorneys and activists. Focusing on prisons in Michigan, the book traces how incarcerated women fought for civil rights and human rights during the rise of mass imprisonment. Ernst’s scholarship emphasizes the perspectives of incarcerated people and the legacies of racial oppression and gendered harm in the criminal legal system.

Ernst holds degrees from the University of Chicago, the University of Oxford, and Northwestern University, where she received her Ph.D. in American History in 2018.