In This Place Called Prison: Women's Religious Life in the Shadow of Punishment

by Rachel Ellis

In This Place Called Prison offers a vivid account of religious life within an institution designed to punish. Rachel Ellis conducted a year of ethnographic fieldwork inside a U.S. state women’s prison, talking with hundreds of incarcerated women, staff, and volunteers. Through their stories, Ellis shows how women draw on religion to navigate lived experiences of carceral control. A trenchant study of religion colliding and colluding with the state in an enduring tension between freedom and constraint, this book speaks to the quest for dignity and light against the backdrop of mass incarceration, state surveillance, and American inequality.

280 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 4, 2023

Reviews

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Asks such good questions about religion and the carceral system. I’m not sure I’m convinced by her argument and the ending has no concrete steps for moving forward. I would love to see more direction for the future.