'[A] valuable book...[it] deserves to be found on student reading lists as a useful text which reveals the importance of gender to historical, theoretical and policy analysis.' Sociology This is the first comprehensive account of women's prisons, examining their development from the eighteenth century to the present. Throughout the authors contrast the realities of prison life, with the ideologies and policies that emphasize therapy as the route to reform and show how these therapeutic ideals have not been properly applied.