UCLA Center for the Study of Women

“Maximizing Time, Maximizing Punishment: The Lived Experience of Long-Term Sentences in California Women’s Prisons” is based on the inaugural study of the University of California Sentencing Project (UCSP). In partnership with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), the UCSP grew out of a demand by people incarcerated at the California Institution for Women (CIW) for research that examines the under-studied conditions and lived ramifications of long-term sentences. In December of 2019, the UCSP launched its first research effort with twenty-two collaborators who had served or faced a long-term sentence in California’s prisons designated for women.