This book addresses one of the more alarming findings to emerge about women in prison: the fact that 80 percent report histories of physical and sexual abuse.

Elizabeth Comack is a distinguished professor emerita in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Manitoba. Comack’s work in the sociology of law and feminist criminology has been instrumental in setting the course for Canadian scholarship. She is a member of the Manitoba Research Alliance, a consortium of academics and community partners engaged in research addressing poverty in Indigenous and inner-city communities. Comack is the author or editor of 13 books, including Coming Back to Jail: Women, Trauma, and Criminalization; “Indians Wear Red”: Colonialism, Resistance, and Aboriginal Street Gangs (co-authored with Laurie Deane, Larry Morrissette, and Jim Silver); and Racialized Policing: Aboriginal People’s Encounters with Police.

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“Elizabeth allows the women in this book to speak their own truth. It’s a graphic, shocking, depressing and absolutely necessary account of the connections between histories of abuse and trouble with the law.”

Karen Toole-Mitchell, Winnipeg Free Press