The true life: women's sense of self in places of detention

The paper discusses the peculiarities of serving sentences in places of detention for women who have committed crimes. Based on a semi-structured in-depth interview, the authors have described the women’s sense of self in prisons. Today it is improper to discuss issues related to female crime or even to the closed community of convicted women. The authors made an attempt to reproduce the women's sense of self in the social environment of a closed social system, and to analyze the patterns of behavior and social conditions that determine them. Summarizing the characteristic traits of this uncommon social group, the authors described everyday life of women serving sentences, their social motivation and attitudes. As a result of the research, it was concluded that the social portrait of a woman serving a prison sentence depends on the informal status of a correctional facility, on the social status and system of values acquired before conviction, and on the self-motivation.