The Farm: Life Inside a Women's Prison
Rierden (journalism, Fairfield Univ.), who has covered New Haven and Bridgeport, Connecticut, for the Sunday New York Times, spent three and a half years at Connecticut's only prison for women, the Niantic Correctional Institution ("the Farm"), interviewing prisoners whose background often included urban violence, drugs, gangs, and abuse, as well as their counselors and correctional officers. The result is part sociological study, part hard-hitting journalistic account of the lives, past and present, of these women. Sometimes it takes patience to find the poignant vignettes amid the accounts of the prison's evolution, but it is usually worth the effort. Recommended for all crime collections.?Frances O. Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, N.Y.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.