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Jailcare is a moving and galvanizing story of pregnant women in jail and those responsible for their health...

 

“...it is essential reading for anyone who cares about women, children, and justice."

Piper Kerman, Author of Orange is the New Black

Discount code (30%): 16M4197

Thousands of pregnant women pass through our nation’s jails every year. What happens to them as they carry their pregnancies in a space of punishment? In this time when the public safety net is frayed, incarceration has become a central and racialized strategy for managing the poor. Using her ethnographic fieldwork and clinical work as an ob-gyn in a women’s jail, Carolyn Sufrin explores how jail has, paradoxically, become a place where women can find care.

 

Focusing on the experiences of incarcerated pregnant women as well as on the practices of the jail guards and health providers who care for them, Jailcare describes the contradictory ways that care and maternal identity emerge within a punitive space presumed to be devoid of care. Sufrin argues that jail is not simply a disciplinary institution that serves to punish. Rather, when understood in the context of the poverty, addiction, violence, and racial oppression that characterize these women’s lives and their reproduction, jail has, tragically, become a safety net for women on the margins of society.

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COMMENTS FROM THE FIELD

Sufrin opens Pandora’s box and provides an absorbing, accessible, and stunning view of women’s reproductive health within the criminal justice system. Jailcare offers a rare, substantive engagement on the intersections of sex, race, and class behind bars and exposes the strange and troubling paradoxes that attend pregnancy and reproductive health behind bars."

Sufrin’s captivating, beautifully told, but extremely disturbing stories of pregnant women and mothers in jail and the people charged with caring for them are an indictment of a cruel society...This stunning book is a must-read not only for professionals in the field, but for every citizen who does not understand the consequences of mass incarceration for women, their children, their caretakers, and the society that allows it.”

In this remarkable and vividly descriptive ethnography, Carolyn Sufrin has given us a fresh and sophisticated exploration of the contemporary intersection between custody and treatment, punishment and ‘care.’ Disturbing and unforgettable, Jailcare is a must-read for anyone concerned with the fate of women in the U.S. criminal justice system.”

MICHELE BRACHTER GOODWIN, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY AND GLOBAL HEALTH POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - IRVINE SCHOOL OF LAW

NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES, AUTHOR OF DEATH WITHOUT WEEPING: THE VIOLENCE OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN BRAZIL

LORNA RHODES, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

“Carolyn Sufrin’s unique positionality as a physician/anthropologist delivering healthcare to pregnant women in the San Francisco County Jail renders visible the coercive and bureaucratically litigious contortions of caregiving for ‘unworthy’ mothers. Her ethnography of the judgmentally triaged, hypermedicalized practices of a clinical oasis within the carceral services documents genuine expressions of solitary care by guards wielding arbitrarily discretionary punitive power. It serves as a condemnation of our society, in which indigent, addicted mothers too often access prenatal care only behind bars.”

Comments

COMMENTS FROM THE FIELD

Sufrin opens Pandora’s box and provides an absorbing, accessible, and stunning view of women’s reproductive health within the criminal justice system. Jailcare offers a rare, substantive engagement on the intersections of sex, race, and class behind bars and exposes the strange and troubling paradoxes that attend pregnancy and reproductive health behind bars."

Sufrin’s captivating, beautifully told, but extremely disturbing stories of pregnant women and mothers in jail and the people charged with caring for them are an indictment of a cruel society...This stunning book is a must-read not only for professionals in the field, but for every citizen who does not understand the consequences of mass incarceration for women, their children, their caretakers, and the society that allows it.”

In this remarkable and vividly descriptive ethnography, Carolyn Sufrin has given us a fresh and sophisticated exploration of the contemporary intersection between custody and treatment, punishment and ‘care.’ Disturbing and unforgettable, Jailcare is a must-read for anyone concerned with the fate of women in the U.S. criminal justice system.”

MICHELE BRACHTER GOODWIN, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY AND GLOBAL HEALTH POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - IRVINE SCHOOL OF LAW

NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES, AUTHOR OF DEATH WITHOUT WEEPING: THE VIOLENCE OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN BRAZIL

LORNA RHODES, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

“Carolyn Sufrin’s unique positionality as a physician/anthropologist delivering healthcare to pregnant women in the San Francisco County Jail renders visible the coercive and bureaucratically litigious contortions of caregiving for ‘unworthy’ mothers. Her ethnography of the judgmentally triaged, hypermedicalized practices of a clinical oasis within the carceral services documents genuine expressions of solitary care by guards wielding arbitrarily discretionary punitive power. It serves as a condemnation of our society, in which indigent, addicted mothers too often access prenatal care only behind bars.”

PHILIPPE BOURGOIS, AUTHOR OF IN SEARCH OF RESPECT: SELLING CRACK IN EL BARRIO AND CO-AUTHOR OF RIGHTEOUS DOPEFIEND

BIO

Proceeds from the book will be donated to:

1) The American Civil Liberties Union (National Prison Project and Reproductive Freedom Project)-- which fights to ensure incarcerated people have access to health care

2) National Bail Out- helps to bail out mamas and other people in jail who are there because they cannot buy their freedom

3)SisterSong- Leading reproductive justice advocacy group.

Carolyn Sufrin is a medical anthropologist and obstetrician/gynecologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  She worked as a physician at the San Francisco jail from 2007-2013, where she started an onsite women's health specialty clinic.   Her work is dedicated to research, advocacy, and care for incarcerated women, especially at the intersection of health care and criminal justice system reform.

Sufrin earned an MD from Johns Hopkins, a PhD in medical anthropology from University of California at San Francisco, an MA in cultural anthropology from Harvard, and a BA from Amherst College. 

Sufrin currently leads Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated People (ARRWIP). ARRWIP is a group of researchers examining the intersections of reproductive justice and the criminal legal system out of Johns Hopkins University. ARRWIP started with the PIPS Project: the first-ever systematic study of pregnancy outcomes from carceral institutions in the U.S. 

 

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Currently, there are no upcoming events. 

JAILCARE IN THE NEWS

Mother Jones Interview
August 5, 2017

PAST EVENTS(2018)

Nov.

8

6pm-8pm

CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND CUNY SCHOOL OF LAW

PANEL DISCUSSION

RETHINKING REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE BEYOND BARS AND BEYOND

With co-panelists from the Women in Prison Project, Women's Pre-trial Release Project, Decarceration Project at Legal Aid Society, and Ancient Song Doula Services

CUNY SCHOOL OF LAW

AUDITORIUM, 2/301

2 COURT SQUARE

LONG ISLAND CITY, NY

PAST EVENTS(2017)

June

6

6pm-8pm

RELEASE EVENT

POTTER'S HOUSE

WASHINGTON, DC

WITH COMMENTS FROM

AMY FETTIG,

DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL PRISON PROJECT AT THE ACLU

July

14

 

6:30-8:30pm

BOOK EVENT

THE WOMEN'S BUILDING

 3543 18TH ST.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

READING AND COMMUNITY DISCUSSION

MODERATED BY:

ALISON HARDY

SENIOR STAFF ATTORNEY, PRISON LAW OFFICE

LISA PRATT

DIRECTOR, SAN FRANCISCO JAIL HEALTH SERVICES

August

10

 

7:30pm

RED EMMA'S BOOKSTORE

 30 W. NORTH AVE

BALTIMORE, MD

READING AND COMMUNITY DISCUSSION 

Nov.

3

6-7:30pm

READING AND COMMUNITY DISCUSSION

SEMINARY CO-OP BOOKSTORE

5751 S. WOODLAWN AVE

CHICAGO, IL 60637

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Twitter: @cbsufrin

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