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“I Don’t Want to Go Back to That Town:” Incarcerated Mothers and Their Return Home to Rural Communities

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Abstract

The increased representation of women in prisons and its consequences has been constructed as an urban, inner-city problem. Lost in this conversation, is the acknowledgement of how the limited socioeconomic opportunities, spatial isolation, and stigma which characterize rural America, lead to the vulnerabilities that mark the lives of rural women (Pruitt in Utah Law Rev 2:421–488, 2007). Through the lens of the Vulnerability Conceptual Model, this study explores the ways that community context shapes women’s experiences of mothering, the effect of incarceration on their children, and plans for returning home. Results of the study contribute to the limited research dedicated to rural women, usually obscured by society’s dominant urban perspective.

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Notes

  1. Meaning they were providing most of the daily care for their children, including facilitating all of their day-to-day activities.

  2. Rural areas are not homogenous and often vary in a number of social, economic, and political ways (Weisheit and Donnermeyer 2000).

  3. There are actually several complementary terms in the criminological and sociological literature, including: density of acquaintanceship, lack of anonymity, collective efficacy, and gemeinschaft (Amato 1993; Cancino 2005; Freudenburg 1986; Pruitt 2007).

  4. Rural areas were identified based upon the designation of Illinois counties from The Office of Rural Health Policy available at ftp://ftp.hrsa.gov/ruralhealth/eligibility2005.pdf.

  5. Following the convention of Few-Demo and Arditti (2013), all of the women in the study were assigned a pseudo name.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice Sciences, Illinois State University, Campus Box 5250, Normal, IL, 61790, USA

    Dawn Beichner & Cara Rabe-Hemp

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  1. Dawn Beichner
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  2. Cara Rabe-Hemp
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Correspondence to Dawn Beichner.

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Beichner, D., Rabe-Hemp, C. “I Don’t Want to Go Back to That Town:” Incarcerated Mothers and Their Return Home to Rural Communities. Crit Crim 22, 527–543 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-014-9253-4

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