Expert continued from page 45
photo: J Intintoli
MTSU associate professor Meredith Dye (Sociology and Anthropology) researches women serving life sentences in prison, a small population (5,000 in the United States) that receives little research attention. In 2010, she and her colleague, Professor Ron Aday, visited three Georgia prisons and surveyed 214 of the 300 women serving life sentences in the state. As far as the pair knows, their data represents the largest sample of its kind. After working with Aday to gather data, Dye published “I Just Wanted to Die” in Criminal Justice and Behavior Journal. The article compared suicidal ideation among women before receiving life sentences and then while in prison. Another study, “The Rock I Cling To: Religion in the Lives of Life-Sentenced Women,” was cowritten for the Prison Journal.
Working Behind Bars Meredith Dye studies an oft-ignored female population by Katie Porterfield
Her findings so far, Dye explains, are myth-breaking in that they don’t fit most preexisting perceptions of who the women serving life sentences really are. Though Dye readily cites useful and interesting percentages about the women she surveyed, she’s quick to point out that her research isn’t just about crunching numbers. It’s also about telling the stories of incarcerated women “nobody seems to care about.” “One thing that stands out right away when you meet these women is that they’re like your mom and your grandmom,” Dye said. “They are aging. They have wheelchairs, walkers, white hair, and health problems associated with aging. Or they are middle-aged women who never saw themselves ending up in prison, much less serving a life sentence.” 46 Honors Magazine mtsu.edu/honors