Book Review: Too Much Time: Women in Prison
| Author | Emma Wincup |
| Published date | 01 December 2001 |
| Date | 01 December 2001 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/026455050104800423 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
309
reflection of the exclusion of those voices
from most research and policy debates.
John Minkes
Lecturer in Applied Social Studies,
University of Wales, Swansea
Too Much Time: Women in Prison
Jane Evelyn Atwood
Phaidon Press Limited, 2000;
pp191; £29.95 hbk ISBN 0714839736
This remarkable book is the end product
of a nine year project concerning the
experiences of women in prisons across
the world. The author, an award-winning
photojournalist, offers the reader a rare
glimpse of the lives of women prisoners
mainly through photographs and
interviews.
In the preface, Jane Atwood admits
candidly that her interest in women in
prisons arose by accident, when she was
refused access to French prisons for men
because she was a woman. Despite this
confession her interest in women prisoners
appears very real. Motivated by curiosity,
surprise, shock, bewilderment and rage,
Jane secured access to prisons in the
Czech Republic, France, India, Israel,
Russia, Spain, Switzerland and eight
American states. However, she misses an
opportunity to explore differences
between prisons in these countries.
Some of the photographs presented in
the book highlight the austere conditions
(for example, fences topped with barbed
wire and spartan cells). Others reveal the
indignities that women are subjected to
(for example, strip searches, toilets in
shared cells, and women shackled to
hospital beds). Since the great
transformation at the end of the eighteenth
century, punishment may be directed at
the mind rather than the body but this
books illustrates the physical suffering
women experience or inflict on
themselves (for example, photographs of
women who have self-harmed) as a
consequence of imprisonment.
The images are interspersed with the
stories of women prisoners and those who
work with them. They are presented in the
style of Tony Parker, an oral historian
known for his ability to encourage people
to talk at length so he could present
uninterrupted accounts. The interviews are
likely to be a judicious version of the
women’s lives and experiences of
imprisonment, since the author was
rarely allowed to interview women
without prison officers being present.
Initially, I wondered if this book was
violating the already constantly threatened
privacy and dignity of women prisoners.
As I became more familiar with the
project I was reassured that it was ethical-
ly sound. Every woman who appears in
the photographs, or told her story, gave
permission to use it. Many more women
declined to be involved in the project.
This is not a book to read from cover
to cover but one to dip into from time to
time. Those who have talked extensively
to women in prison as practitioners or
researchers will find many familiar tales,
but there is also much to learn. For me,
its main purpose is to offer a powerful,
and graphic, reminder of the pains of
imprisonment across the world.
Emma Wincup
Lecturer in Sociology,
University of Kent at Canterbury
Book Reviews-p301-309 22/11/01 9:17 am Page 9
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