This article examines the multiple issues that contribute to the incarceration of African American women and threaten to render these women recidivists. These issues include but are not limited to substance abuse, sexual abuse, fractured familial relations, and abusive intimate relationships. In an attempt to examine these issues, the article explores how, prior to their imprisonment, social factors contravene African American women's attempts at enforcing their traditional roles as “women.” The article attempts to show that the increased incarceration of African American women is part of a cultural phenomenon that reflects their social exclusion in U.S. society.
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