THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
JAIL BABIES. Prisoners and their children sun themselves on a porch at Massachusetts' Reformatory for Women (as it was then known) in Framingham in March 1945. Today, according to a recent report by the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at UMass, inmates at Framingham - 71 percent of whom are mothers - have difficulty maintaining even basic contact with their children.
JAIL BABIES. Prisoners and their children sun themselves on a porch at Massachusetts' Reformatory for Women (as it was then known) in Framingham in March 1945. Today, according to a recent report by the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at UMass, inmates at Framingham - 71 percent of whom are mothers - have difficulty maintaining even basic contact with their children. (Globe File Photo) Globe File Photo

Locked In

Ever since America's first women's prison opened nearly 200 years ago, debate has raged over how to treat female inmates.

By Cristina Rathbone
May 29, 2005

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WOMEN'S PRISONS have long been lugubrious places in popular imagination, salacious versions of men's prisons where intimidatingly butch women struggle for social dominance between sex romps on the side. The image is so entrenched that many women sent to prison think this is how it will be. They're as surprised as anyone to find that the woman sharing their cell ... (Full article: 2053 words)

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