Who Would Believe a Prisoner?

Edited by Michelle Daniel Jones and Elizabeth Angeline Nelson, this collection uses prison archives and writings by incarcerated women to tell the history of the first women's prison in Indiana from 1848 to 1920.

The volume centers incarcerated voices, revealing knowledge and perspectives often excluded from official histories and reforms.

It exposes how inmate-authored records disrupt institutional narratives and illuminate everyday realities of confinement, labor, and reform.

The book is praised for highlighting marginalized epistemologies and for its methodological value in prison studies and public history.

Mark Letteney recommended it as a model for taking prisoners' knowledge seriously.