Who Would Believe a Prisoner?
Indiana Women’s Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920
What if prisoners were to write the history of their own prison? What might that tell them—and all of us—about the roots of the system that incarcerates so many millions of Americans?
In this groundbreaking and revelatory volume, a group of incarcerated women at the Indiana Women’s Prison have assembled a chronicle of what was originally known as the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls, founded in 1873 as the first totally separate prison for women in the United States. In an effort that has already made the national news, and which was awarded the Indiana History Outstanding Project for 2016 by the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project worked under conditions of sometimes extreme duress, excavating documents, navigating draconian limitations on what information incarcerated scholars could see or access, and grappling with the unprecedented challenges stemming from co-authors living on either side of the prison walls.
With contributions from ten incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women, the result is like nothing ever produced in the historical literature: a document that is at once a shocking revelation of the roots of America’s first prison for women, and also a meditation on incarceration itself. Who Would Believe a Prisoner? is a book that will be read and studied for years to come as the nation continues to grapple with the crisis of mass incarceration.
Reviews & Praise
From The New Yorker: “Who Would Believe a Prisoner? is a work of historical scholarship that operates like a telescope, extending into the past to get a closer look at how sex-segregated incarceration operated in its early days, and then retracting back to the present to analyze findings within a contemporary, anti-carceral framework. Revelations are fact-checked against available historical evidence but also gut-checked against the authors’ personal knowledge of jail and prison dynamics…
On the one hand, Who Would Believe a Prisoner? speaks to the fundamental, enduring tensions that define places where people are held without their liberty, whether one calls these places a prison or a refuge. On the other hand, both the book’s existence and the stories it contains are testaments to the enormous capacities and resilience of people who are incarcerated; to their courageous rejection of sanitizing narratives about their experience; and to the profound, sustaining power of education and collective inquiry as part of what Elizabeth Nelson, one of the anthology’s co-editors, calls “the long game of liberation.”” - Rachael Bedard, The New Yorker
“From inside the walls of a prison, the authors of Who Would Believe a Prisoner? created something authentic and revolutionary: the story of the very institution that was the root of their oppression. In the voices of these incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women, we can hear the truth of what incarceration does to human beings—and also the possibility for genuine reform.”
- Susan Burton, author of Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women
“[Scholars] at America’s oldest women’s prison are writing a history of it—and exploding the myth of its benevolent founders.”
- Slate
“The work of the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project, as the collective of incarcerated scholars came to be known, is an excellent example of what research can look like when it is led by those directly impacted by the systems and institutional structures they are researching.”
- Laura Ciolkowski, Antipode
About the Authors
The Indiana Women’s Prison History Project was founded by a group of incarcerated scholars at the Indiana Women’s Prison. The authors of Who Would Believe a Prisoner? (The New Press) have garnered national acclaim in the media and among scholarly organizations. They were awarded the “Indiana History Outstanding Project” during the state’ bicentennial year by the Indiana Historical Society.
Click on the names or photos below to learn more about the authors of Who Would Believe a Prisoner?
Book Tour
Michelle Daniel Jones at the Beyond the Bars Conference in New York, NY on March 25, 2023
Michelle Daniel Jones at the Law and Society Association Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico on June 1, 2023
Michelle Daniel Jones and Elizabeth Angeline Nelson at the Women Against Mass Incarceration Book Signing Event in Bridgeport, CT on May 20, 2023
“Unsilenced: Rewriting History from Prison”
“Unsilenced: Rewriting History from Prison” introduces the history projects at the Indiana Women's Prison and Tomoka Correctional Institution in Florida.
Thank You
We would like to thank all administrators and staff in the Indiana Department of Correction and the Indiana Women’s Prison who supported the Women’s Prison History Project, especially the Indiana Commissioner of Correction Bruce Lemmon, the Department of Correction’s Director of Education John Nally, IWP Superintendent Steve McCauley, and IWP Education Director Carol Foster.
At the Indiana Historical Society dinner to honor recipients of the 2016 History Awards, including Best History Project awarded to IWP. There to accept the award are John Nally, DOC Director of Education; Meg Galasso, instructor in the IWP Higher Education program; Carol Foster, IWP director of education programs; Gary Curto, head of the IU video help desk; Kelsey Kauffman, director of the IWP Higher Education Program; and Steve McCauley, Superintendent of IWP
Bill Bartelt of the Indiana Historical Society presents the superintendent of the Indiana Women’s Prison, Steve McCauley, and the first Women’s Prison History Project Director, Kelsey Kauffman, with the Indiana Historical Society’s award for best history project in the state during 2016, Indiana’s bicentennial year
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