Women, Film, and Law convincingly argues that popular depictions of women’s imprisonment can illuminate the multiple forms of social exclusion and oppression experienced by criminalized women. And the creative influence of film and television also generates legal meaning.

Focusing on five exemplary women-in-prison genre films and a television series — Ann Vickers (1933), Caged (1950), Caged Heat (1974), Stranger Inside (2001), Civil Brand (2002), and Orange is the New Black (2013–present) — Women, Film, and Law asks how fictional representations explore, shape, and refine beliefs about women who are incarcerated. From melodrama to exploitation, and from theatre screenings to on-demand film, television programs, and music videos, these texts bring into view the legal, economic, and political structures that criminalize women differently from men, and that target those women who are already marginalized.