Customer Reviews

The Farm: Life Inside a Women's Prison

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This book offers an honest and sensative look at real human beings and their lives. Without getting overly romantic about their situation in prison, it yields a soft picture of a side of society we too easily forget, avoid or misunderstand. It expands your vision of the world and therefore is very much worth reading.

After having purchased, "Couldn't Keep It to Myself," by Wally Lamb and having enjoyed it immensely, I moved on to this collection of stories. I loved the honest protrayal of the women who are both incarcerated and in charge of the ward. The journalistic tone of this book certainly conveys the very humanity of these women, and that is something that I think we often don't consider when thinking of criminals. Certainly this is a heavier read than what most would choose for bedtime enjoyment, but it is a substantial work that deserves time and attention. I highly recommend Rierden's book to anyone.

The Farm: Life Inside A Women's Prison vicariously depicts daily life in the only state prison for women in Connecticut through stories obtained from interviews with inmates, correctional officers, and counselors over a three-and-a-half year period. The author, Andi Rierden, paints a transient picture of the evolution of a farm-based institution with a close-knit group of female inmates and correctional officers to a prison bursting at the seams with inmates plagued by lives of drugs, HIV/AIDS, violence, neglect, assault, sexually transmitted infections, and attempts to maintain care of their children from within prison walls. Rierden also describes the female inmates' endeavors to assuage their isolation through the formation of family units and intimate relationships within the prison community, drastically contrasting the independence found within male institutions. She depicts the prison authorities' efforts to maintain a rehabilitative focus in face of a growing emphasis on crime control. The author exhibits the difficulties inherent in establishing and maintaining effective programming, as well as the turmoil experienced by the female inmates as they transfer from one overcrowded unit to the next within the prison. The novel provides an honest and often brash account of the inmates' lives both inside and outside prison walls, suggesting neither their guilt nor innocence. The question remains-are the inmates "victims of circumstance" or guilty perpetrators? Decide for yourself by reading The Farm! We highly recommend this book to correction officers, as well as all interested in the field of criminal justice!

The Farm: Life Inside a Women's Prison

This book is very thought provoking as it goes in detail into some of the lives of women incarcerated and those working inside the prison refered to as "the Farm".