While the number of incarcerated women is dramatically escalating, women prisoners throughout the world are largely an invisible and neglected population. These comparative essays examine thoroughly the unique problems, challenges, and issues facing women inmates in the United States, Canada, England, New Zealand, Poland, and Thailand. The insightful volume fills a major gap in criminal justice literature, and it provides a solid basis for further discussion of the too-long ignored subject of women's imprisonment. (view table of contents)