In This Place Called Prison – Women′s Religious Life in the Shadow of Punishment

"Few works expose the core of America's complex religion of punishment and patriarchy better than this remarkable book. It is a revelation, a reckoning, and hopefully a Road to Damascus moment for the field."--Shadd Maruna, author of Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives

"Through deft storytelling and sensitive ethnography, Ellis unravels the symbiosis of two quintessentially American institutions--prison and Christianity. Through the eyes of women behind bars, we witness religion's counterintuitive power to ease but also exacerbate the pains of imprisonment."--Forrest Stuart, author of Down, Out, and Under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row

"In This Place Called Prison adds a much-needed carceral ethnography to the dearth of scholarship on women's prisons and offers powerful new insights into the role of religion in incarcerated women's lives. A beautifully written and important work."--Jody Miller, author of Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence

"Ellis's book is a timely and important contribution to the growing body of ethnographic literature on the societal effect of mass incarceration. This gripping and well-written account provides a fresh perspective not only on the understudied demographic of women in prison but also on how imprisonment takes a brutal and unrecognized toll on women, the rest of their families, and their religious lives."--Elijah Anderson, author of Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City