10.

1177/0886109903257550
Affilia
Winter 2003

Pollack

ARTICLE

Focus-Group Methodology in
Research With Incarcerated Women:
Race, Power, and Collective Experience
Shoshana Pollack

Feminist researchers have found focus groups to be valuable for understanding collective experiences of marginalization, developing a structural analysis of individual experiences, and challenging taken-for-granted assumptions about race, gender,
sexuality, and class. These benefits are in contrast to individual interviews, which
may lend themselves to privatized and individualistic accounts of gendered experiences and which risk reproducing colonizing relationships and discourses. This
study used both individual interviews (life-history methodology) and focus-group
interviews to examine the effects of marginalization and oppression on Black Canadian womens lawbreaking. Combining these two methodologies may be particularly fruitful in cross-cultural and/or cross-racial research and in contexts such as
correctional institutions, where issues of power and disclosure are amplified.
Keywords:

female offenders; focus-group methodology; Black women prisoners

Focus-group methodology has been advocated for feminist researchers

who are interested in examining context-embedded gendered experiences.
Feminist researchers have argued that focus groups are a particularly
appropriate methodology for research with oppressed and marginalized
groups because they have the potential to shift power from the researcher to
the participants (Madriz, 2001; Montell, 1999; Wilkinson, 1998). In addition,
feminist researchers have found focus groups to be valuable for understanding collective experiences of marginalization, developing a structural
analysis of individual experience, and challenging taken-for-granted
assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, and class (Kitzinger, 1994;
Montell, 1999; Wilkinson, 1998). They have contrasted the benefits of focus
Authors Note: The author would like to thank Dr. Lea Caragata for her comments on this
article.
AFFILIA, Vol. 18 No. 4, Winter 2003 461-472
DOI: 10.1177/0886109903257550
2003 Sage Publications

461

462

Affilia Winter 2003

groups with those of individual interviews, which may lend themselves to

privatized and individualistic accounts of gendered experiences and which
risk reproducing colonizing relationships and discourses (Madriz, 2001;
Montell, 1999; Wilkinson, 1998).
The study presented here used both individual interviews (life-history
methodology) and focus-group interviews to examine the effects of
marginalization and oppression on womens lawbreaking. In keeping with
Wilkinsons (1998) suggestion that studies that use both methods should
analyze and explicate the relationship between the data, rather than report
the data separately, this article reports on the didactic relationship between
the data collected through both methods in research on Black Canadian
womens lawbreaking. The interviews with the Black participants revealed
the importance of focus-group methodology in countering dominant discourses about marginalized groups. Although the individual focus of lifehistory interviews allows personal and intimate life details to be discussed,
these interviews are less useful for examining structural, systemic, and
ideological practices that shape human experience, especially when the
researcher is a member of the dominant group. The individual interviews
and focus groups in this study complemented each other in such a way as to
elicit a deeper and more complete picture of the participants lives. Combining these two methodologies may be particularly fruitful in crosscultural and/or cross-racial research and in contexts such as correctional
institutions, where issues of power and disclosure are amplified.

RESEARCH ON WOMEN IN PRISON

Although there has been little research on Black prisoners in Canada, the
data that do exist have shown that, like Aboriginal people, Blacks are
overrepresented in Canadian prisons (Wortely, 1998, as cited in Roberts,
2001). Studies have found that in the United States and Canada, women
prisoners have usually been convicted of nonviolent crimes, experienced
childhood physical and sexual abuse, have experienced battering in their
adult relationships with men, are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, are relatively young, have minimal formal education, and are from poor and
minority backgrounds (Hannah-Moffat & Shaw, 2001; Maeve, 1999).
Although these experiences reflect both psychological and social factors in
relation to womens crime, research on programs for women prisoners have
tended to focus almost exclusively on the psychological factors (Kendall,
2000). As a result, the literature on women in prison has constructed these
women as having low self-esteem and being poor copers and bad decision
makers. Much of the womens behavior is pathologized, individualized,
and rendered irrational through this psychological lens (Kendall, 2000; Pollack, 2000a).

Pollack

463

The Correctional Service of Canada incorporated this understanding of

womens lawbreaking into Creating Choicesthe blueprint for recent
womens prison reforms in Canada (Task Force on Federally Sentenced
Women, 1990). This document stresses that women who break the law have
few coping skills and are unable to make good decisions. As a result, it advocates programs that are designed to empower women by raising their
self-esteem and teaching them to think more rationally. This model obscures
the social context of womens lives by focusing on the individual in isolation
from her interpersonal and social circumstances (Pollack, 2000a).
Recent scholarship has focused not on the criminal mind but on how
particular groups of people are criminalized (Arnold, 1990; Chan &
Mirchandani, 2002; Richie, 1996; Ross, 1998). It has explicated the connections between socioeconomic and gender marginalization and how resistance to these circumstances may lead to criminalization. Such work is helpful for contextualizing womens lawbreaking as well as their subjective
experiences and behavior. In this study, I was particularly interested in
understanding the social context of womens lawbreaking and thus in
exploring the intersection of both individual characteristics and structural
factors that lead to criminalization.

THE STUDY
Purpose

This study was conducted from August 1998 to December 1998 at a mediumsized Canadian federal womens prison (federal prisons in Canada are for
those who are sentenced to terms of more than 2 years). The purpose of the
study was to investigate the relationship between structural oppression and
womens lawbreaking. The research questions emerged from a critique of
the individualistic and deficit-based constructions of women offenders and
focused on the social context of womens lawbreaking. They were as follows: How are womens experiences of agency and autonomy shaped by
their social location? What is the relationship between these experiences
and womens lawbreaking? I used Sherwins (1998) definitions of agency as
the making of a reasonable choice and of autonomy as a condition in which
an individual is able to make choices, outside those made available by the
conditions of oppression (pp. 32-33). Therefore, personal decision making,
or agency, is seen within its wider social context.
Method

The study was qualitative and drew on grounded theory methodology

(Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The data were collected through individual and

464

Affilia Winter 2003

focus-group interviews with female prisoners, interviews with staff, analyses of documents, and participant observation.
I chose life-history interviews because of their use in finding out how
marginalized people resist and cope with oppression and [carve] out areas
of autonomy despite their formal lack of power (Anderson, Armitage,
Dana, & Wittner, 1990, p. 108). The life-history interviews were
semistructured and asked about participants family and childhood, work
(both legal and illegal), formal education, intimate relationships, and
imprisonment.
In the focus groups, general questions were asked about the impact of
gender, race, and class on womens lawbreaking, programs needed in
prison, and experiences of incarceration. I chose focus-group methodology
because it has been found to elicit information on the social and political
processes that influence individual experience (Wilkinson, 1998) and thus
was appropriate for the theoretical framework of this study. The focus
groups were conducted at various intervals throughout the period of data
collection. This approach yielded rich data and allowed for a dialectical and
multidirectional relationship between the group and individual interviews.
The ideas and themes that emerged from the interviews were carried into
the groups, which then generated subsequent themes and ideas that flowed
into more individual interviews. I was thus able to test ideas and themes in
both methods and bounce them off the groups and individuals.
This article compares the data gained from the life-history and focusgroup interviews with Black Canadian women in prison, obtained as part of
a larger study of womens lawbreaking that included 15 life-history interviews and three focus groups with women prisoners. In focusing on these
data, I highlight the significance of focus-group methodology in doing
cross-racial/cross-cultural research, particularly when the researcher is a
member of the dominant group. In addition, the differences between what
the women said in these two formats may be instructive for researchers who
want to elicit counternarratives to dominant discourses (i.e., correctional
and psychological) that frame the experiences, needs, and behavior of
marginalized groups as deviant and deficient.
Participants

At the time of data collection, 87 women were incarcerated at the prison. Of

these 87, 48 (55%) were Caucasian, 22 (25%) were Black, 5 (6%) were Aboriginal, 3 (3.4%) were Asian, 2 (2.3%) were Hispanic, and 2 (2.3%) were East
Indian; no data on race or ethnicity were available for the remaining 5 (6%)
women. It was not clear from the statistics I received whether data on race/
ethnicity were obtained from self-reports or someone elses assessment.
I recruited most of the participants myself by hanging around the smoking area, chatting, and introducing myself, which led to women volunteering to participate in either an interview or a group. Often, after their

Pollack

465

individual interviews, the participants recruited others for the focus

groups, as was the case with the Black womens focus group.
This article reports specifically on one focus group (consisting of 4 Black
participants) and five life-history interviews with Black women. Three of
the focus-group members also participated in life-history interviews. The
homogeneity of the all Black-focus group was intentional; I thought that it
was important to conduct a focus group with only Black participants to
increase the likelihood that they would speak more freely about the impact
of race and culture, as they were being interviewed by a White researcher.
With the exception of one woman (who was born in Canada of West Indian
parents), all the participants were born in the Caribbean (either Barbados or
Jamaica) and had moved to Canada when they were children. They were
convicted of property crimes, such as shoplifting and fraud, and for drug
trafficking and were serving sentences of from just more than 2 years to 4
years. The women ranged in age from 24 to 44, and 4 of the 6 women had
some college or university education. Four women had children and were
the sole providers for their families.
Data Analysis

The data analysis drew on grounded theory techniques (Strauss & Corbin,
1990) and consisted of roughly three phases. The first phase involved open
coding, in which I examined the data for conceptual labels placed on discrete happenings, events, and other instances of phenomena (Strauss &
Corbin, 1990, p. 61). The second phase involved examining the data within
each category in relation to each other. During the third phase, I went back
and forth among the data, the coding of the data, and the relevant scholarly
literature to develop and refine the theoretical issues being developed. The
result of this phase was the identification of patterns and a story line
(Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 119) that led to my eventual analytic framework
for understanding and interpreting the data.
Another aspect of the data analysis pertained specifically to the analysis
of the focus-group interviews. Initially, I analyzed the focus-group interviews as I just delineated. However, the different types of data gained
through the individual interviews and the focus group led me to another
form of analysis that involved examining the data in relation to how the
focus-group participants constructed the meaning of their lawbreaking and
the types of topics they raised. I then compared these issues to those raised
in the individual life-history interviews to see where there were overlaps,
discrepancies, and ambiguities.
Research in the Prison Context

To gain access to this prison for research purposes, I needed to have my

research proposal reviewed by a team of psychologists with the

466

Affilia Winter 2003

Correctional Service of Canada. Once the proposal was approved, I contacted the deputy warden of the prison and began my research. Several
years earlier, I had worked as a therapist in a womens prison. Some of the
staff and prisoners with whom I had previously worked had been transferred to the institution in which I was conducting the research, so I knew
some of the employees and prisoners there.
The prisoners made it easy for me to move into this community of women
as a researcher. They introduced me to their friends, invited me to their living units, asked me for various means of support and help, and visited me
regularly for coffee. Although I was no longer employed by the correctional
system, my social location as a White, middle-class woman with formal
education allied me with the authority of the institution. It is likely that my
status as White and middle class and the prison environment both influenced and shaped the participants narratives.

FINDINGS
Life-History Interviews: Dealing with Racism

The women (all of whose names are pseudonyms that they chose) spoke of
racism as a fact of life over which they had little control. They said such
things as the following:
You cant stop your neighbor from doing it (being racist). (Sandra)
You cant beat out whats there before and whats going to be there after us.
(Puss)
You cant change it and rewrite a new song. (Goldtooth)

With regard to racism and sexism, the participants in the life-history interviews expressed their sense of agency and resistance by how they coped
with this reality. Two participants said that they dont see color, referring
to a color-blind approach. As Puss pointed out, focusing on being a Black
woman is self-defeating.
So, and if youre going to use Oh, Im Black, youve already defeated yourself before youve started fighting. And if youre gonna use Im a Black
woman, you have killed yourself before you step off the block.

The participants felt the impact of racism on their lives, but, for the most
part, they did not think that there was a connection between racialized experiences and their lawbreaking. As I mentioned earlier, these women had
been convicted of economic crimes, such as fraud and drug trafficking.
When asked about the impact of race or gender on their lives, they framed

Pollack

467

their responses in relation to their access to employment or social status. As

Sandra put it,
Because the way I look at it, when you go for a job . . . the employer is looking at
you for who you are, not for your race or like, youre a woman or a man or
whatever. Its the person and how you, you come off to them; . . . they look at
the rsum.

Two other participants, also drawing on themes related to material survival,

said that it was up to the individual to make something of her life.
I dont see color so . . . But has being a woman influenced my life? [long pause]
Not really. Because I didnt achieve anything. . . . I mean, in this country, being
a woman, theres a lot of doors open for you, OK? But, um, I just didnt make
the necessary steps, I guess, to do something. (Jovinka)
If you are determined enough, if you are strong-willed enough, if you believe
in yourself enough, you can get anything you want out of life, whether you are
pink, black, brown, or purple. (Puss)

Another participants comments, although reflecting the meritocratic

discourse of the previous participants, illustrate an internal tension
between the participants awareness of the possibility of encountering racism in the employment market and her need to have confidence that she
will be treated equally.
I dont think that if myself and a White woman goes [sic] for an interview or
whatever, she has a betterprobably she does, maybe if hes biasedno, Im
going in there with full confidence that once I have the requirements and stuff,
that I have a 50-50 chance like everyone else. (Goldtooth)

There was a tension in these stories between the women acknowledging the
existence of racism and not wanting to excuse their own criminal behavior
by using racism. The tension seemed to lie in how to account for the
impact that racial inequality has had on their lived experience, not for their
own illegal actions, for they were clear that these actions were their own
responsibility.
Another tension was related to what it was like to share personal experiences with a White researcher. As R. J. noted, racialized power differences
may shape how participants present their experiences to a White researcher.
Referring to her experience that being Black means being thought of as
inherently criminal, she said,
You can just go up to case management now and say you had me in this room
and I stole your pop. And itd be the shit hits the fan. Its so believable! Yah,
shed do it, look at her. Its so believable.

468

Affilia Winter 2003

R. J. pointed out that although she was sharing personal information with
me, she was doing so at her own peril. She said,
And its so hard, like, you dont know who to trust. You know, like, youve got
some White people saying, Im not prejudiced, Im not prejudiced. But as
soon as we start arguing, [they say] Fuck off, youre nothing but a nigger
anyways. You know, and it hurts. And its hard.

This statement underscores R. J.s point that it is dangerous to trust White

people even if they appear safe on the surface because racist attitudes may
be lying dormant.
Focus-Group Interviews: Systemic
Racism and Collective Experience

The focus-group interviews produced a different type of data: The participants talked explicitly about systemic racism and articulated clear connections between social exclusion and their lawbreaking. Whereas in the
life-history interviews, the participants expressed their struggles in individualistic terms, often blaming themselves for not achieving anything, the
focus-group participants did the opposite: The interaction among the participants tended to de-individualize personal problems and to place them
within the socioeconomic parameters of their lives. This process is illustrated in an excerpt from one of the group sessions. During this conversation, the participants were discussing the reasons they had committed fraud
or imported drugs. The following is an interchange between Goldtooth,
who, while trying to understand the meaning of her shoplifting, questioned
why she could not work a straight job and budget her money, and Puss:
Goldtooth: And every other normal person can make it work. Theyll live
within their means; theyll hang on to the little they have and be grateful.
So, I know somewhere along the line, I think I do have problems,
obviously.
Puss: Dont think youre not normal. Dont ever say that. Youre normal;
you just have higher expectations. You set higher goals for yourself in life.
Maybe you set it the wrong way, but youre just setting higher goals. It
doesnt make you unnormal [sic].
In addition to supporting and validating Goldtooths experiences, Pusss
interjection also led to a group discussion about some of the social factors
operating in the lives of Black Caribbean-Canadian women that make it difficult to live within their means, such as inadequate governmental assistance, the lack of child care, and single motherhood. Part of what happened
in this process was that the participants evoked a discourse of collective

Pollack

469

identity as Black women, particularly Black Caribbean women. They spoke

of cultural and gender factors that influenced how they responded to the
low-wage jobs available to them. In addition, they argued that their lawbreaking was an attempt to gain or supplement their incomes without having to collect governmental assistance. As Shelly said,
A lot of us, we do these things because welfare and social assistance is not for
us. Like we said, our mothers had one, two, even three jobs, and the oldest
child takes care of everybody else. And then you come home, and everythings
done. Its like that. And we dont want to be on welfare. So what we do, we
import, like myself. Or we do fraud or we shoplift.

The participants invoked a discourse of Black womens collective identity

that linked illegal behavior to a desire for independence and a resistance to
state-enforced dependence (see Pollack, 2000b, for a further discussion of
this issue). They viewed Caribbean culture as being more conducive to supporting single motherhood because of a notion of community that these participants thought was not available in Canada. Without a society that supports the interdependence that they knew growing up in the Caribbean, the
participants tried to resist dependence on their own.
In addition to cultural factors, the focus-group members spoke of the
impact that systemic racism has on their access to resources, such as
employment, child care, education, and affordable housing. They identified
many forms of systemic oppression that contributed to their social exclusion and, as a result, to their lawbreaking.
And then when you do get into [subsidized housing], they want to stick you in
a predominantly Black area where all the Black people are, where they think
you want to be. So, you start a chain that cant be broken. (Puss)
Its too hard to survive on social assistance in this country; it really is. I would
like to talk to someone who has four kids, who has lived through the turmoil I
have lived through, and tell me how they existed. Cause theres no way.
Theres no way whatsoever. You gonna steal, youre gonna do something. I stole.
(Jovinka)
Get out to the halfway houseOh, do you know how much university youre
gonna need? Thanks a lot. Thats like kicking me in the ass. Oh, Negro, you
can never do that. . . . So, get used to this life and go back to eight dollars an
hour. (Goldtooth)

In the focus group, the participants stressed how their attempts to sustain
themselves economically were thwarted by their exclusion from the labor
market and/or concentration in low-wage jobs, the lack of affordable housing and day care, and systemic and ideological racism. As a result, they felt
marginalized and positioned on the outside of White mainstream Canadian culture. (Henriques and Manatu-Rupert [2001] made a similar observation about incarcerated African American women.) The participants said

470

Affilia Winter 2003

that illegal work was often a means of economic survival that temporarily
enabled them to provide for themselves, their children, and their future.

DISCUSSION

As some researchers (see, e.g., Montell, 1999; Wilkinson, 1998) have found,
the individual interviews in this study lent themselves to decontextualized
accounts of gendered and racialized experiences. In addition to the risks of
sharing personal experiences in an unequal relationship, as R. J. pointed
out, other factors may have influenced the shape and content of the participants life-history interviews. For example, the prison discourse around racism was one that framed allegations of racist treatment as manipulative
(interviews with staff and prisoners confirmed this allegation). Criminal
justice discourse, in general, encourages lawbreaking stories that emphasize personal responsibility and that locate the cause of criminal behavior
within the prisoners own psychology (Kendall, 2000). Prisoners are penalized if they are perceived to be denying responsibility for their criminal conviction. Life-history methodology, despite the attention to context embedded in it, may nonetheless lend itself to individualistic accounts of peoples
lives (Madriz, 2001; Montell, 1999; Wilkinson, 1998).
In contrast, focus groups emphasize the collective, rather than the individual (Madriz, 2001, p. 838) experience and may be particularly appropriate for research with oppressed women. Madriz (2001) stated that by bringing together women who share a common oppression, feminist researchers
can expose multiple layers of oppression and the resistance strategies that
are used to deal with such experiences. In addition, focus-group methodology shifts some of the researchers power to direct the interview onto the
participants (Madriz, 2001; Wilkinson, 1998), which allows more scope for
the participants to center their concerns and to guide and influence the discussion. For oppressed groups whose experiences and opinions are often
constructed through the lens of dominant knowledge and research paradigms, focus-group methodology may be instrumental in providing space
for traditionally invalidated voices. It is particularly applicable for women
in prison, especially those who are racialized, and who, by virtue of their
conviction, are not regarded as being valid sources of knowledge.
In the focus group, the participants offered counternarratives to those
that circulate in correctional discourse and in the dominant society as a
whole. These counternarratives may reflect what Madriz (2001) called
writing culture together by exposing not only the layers of oppression
that have suppressed these womens expressions but the forms of resistance
that they use every day to deal with such oppressions (p. 836). Women in
the focus group articulated connections among systemic racism, classism,
and sexism and the relationship of these factors to their lawbreaking. This

Pollack

471

method produced a richer and more complex understanding of both their

individual and collective struggles and suggests alternatives to the psychological constructions of womens lawbreaking that permeate correctional
discourse. Instead, the participants counternarratives highlighted the
material, discursive, and ideological practices that contribute to their economic marginalization. This finding suggests the need to shift the emphasis
from purely psychological interventions (such as cognitive behavioral programs that are designed to alter prisoners thought processes) to those that
address barriers to employment, affordable child care, education, and jobs
with decent wages.

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the social
context of womens lawbreaking. The life-history interviews were valuable
sources of information about individual womens experiences of and resistance to marginalization and the womens psychological-emotional
responses. The focus-group data provided a contextual frame for understanding the individual stories that were told during the life-history interviews. Bringing Black women together in a group format seemed to alter the
power dynamics somewhat and to enable the participants to speak about
the social causes of individual struggles that have roots in racist ideologies
and practices. In research that is aimed at gaining a better understanding of
experiences of multiple types of oppression, researchers need to design
methods in ways that create a context in which these narratives can be articulated and heard. As Madriz (2001, p. 839) suggested, feminist researchers
should take into account issues of subjugation when they design their studies. With marginalized and oppressed groups, particularly when the
researcher is a member of the dominant group, focus-group methodology
may be most appropriate for countering dominant myths and discourses
that construct marginalized people as deviant and deficient. The focusgroup data greatly enhanced the analytic merit of this study and produced
important information about Black womens experiences of systemic
oppression, resistance, and lawbreaking.

REFERENCES
Anderson, K., Armitage, S., Dana, J., & Wittner, J. (1990). Beginning where we are: Feminist
methodology in oral history. In M. J. Neilson (Ed.), Feminist research methods: Exemplary
readings in the social sciences (pp. 94-112). Boulder, CO: Westview.
Arnold, R. A. (1990). Process of victimization and criminalization of Black women. Social Justice, 17, 153-166.
Chan, W., & Mirchandani, K. (2002). Crimes of colour: Racialization and the criminal justice system
in Canada. Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press.

472

Affilia Winter 2003

Hannah-Moffat, K., & Shaw, M. (2001). Taking risks: Incorporating gender and culture into the
classification and assessment of federally sentenced women in Canada. Ottawa: Status of Women
Canada.
Henriques, S. W., & Manatu-Rupert, N. (2001). Living on the outside: African American
women before, during, and after imprisonment. Prison Journal, 81(1), 6-19.
Kendall, K. (2000). Psy-ence fiction: Governing female prisons through the psychological sciences. In K. Hannah-Moffat & M. Shaw (Eds.), An ideal prison? Critical essays on womens
imprisonment in Canada. Halifax, Canada: Fernwood Press.
Kitzinger, J. (1994). The methodology of focus groups: The importance of interactions
between research participants. Sociology of Health and Illness, 16, 103-121.
Madriz, E. (2001). Focus groups in feminist research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook
of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 835- 850). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Maeve, K. (1999). Adjudicated health: Incarcerated women and the social construction of
health. Crime, Law & Social Change, 31, 49-71.
Montell, F. (1999). Focus group interviews: A new feminist method. National Womens Studies
Association Journal, 11(1), 44-71.
Pollack, S. (2000a). Reconceptualizing womens agency and empowerment: Challenges to
self-esteem discourse and womens lawbreaking. Women & Criminal Justice, 2(1), 75-89.
Pollack, S. (2000b). Dependency discourse as social control. In K. Hannah-Moffat & M. Shaw
(Eds.), An ideal prison? Critical essays on Canadian womens imprisonment (pp. 72-81). Halifax,
Canada: Fernwood Press.
Richie, B. E. (1996). Compelled to crime: The gender entrapment of battered Black women. New York:
Routledge.
Roberts, J. (2001). Racism and the collection of statistics relating to race and ethnicity. In W.
Chan & K. Mirchandani (Eds.), Crimes of colour: Racialization and the criminal justice system
in Canada (pp. 101-112). Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press.
Ross, L. (1998). Inventing the savage: The social construction of Native American criminality. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Sherwin, S. (1998). A relational approach to autonomy in health care. In S. Sherwin (Ed.), The
politics of womens health (pp. 19-47). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women. (1990). Creating choices. Ottawa: Correctional Service of Canada.
Wilkinson, S. (1998). Focus groups in feminist research: Power, interaction, and the coconstruction of meaning. Womens Studies International Forum, 21, 111-125.

Shoshana Pollack, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid
Laurier University, 75 University West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5, Canada; e-mail:
spollack@wlu.ca.