by Silva Payne

Created on: May 17, 2009   Last Updated: April 23, 2010

Sisters, aunts, daughters, mothers. For as many different kinds of woman as there are, you will find representatives from every group that have married a man in prison. Young and old, rich and poor, working and unemployed, pretty and mousy; there are women from all walks of life who have come into contact somehow with men who are incarcerated and have made the decision to step from friend or penpal, to wife.

Everyone else looking on, will fall into one of two thought camps. There will be those who think the woman has low self-esteem, is probably a habitual victim and feels some kind of safety in her restricted relationship. Then there will be those who agree that these women are the compassionate heart of the nation, who reach out to those no one else will think of, who are strong in the face of adversity, and who carry themselves with dignity and poise. Rarely is there a middle ground with this question.

There are many women who marry their man before he goes to prison. Many stay the course, remain faithful to their vows, and carry on together once the man goes home. Things may not be trouble-free, but their marriage survives. These women are often given the well-meaning advice to leave their husbands behind and move on. If they choose not to, they are not ridiculed in quite the way that prison brides are.

The concern shown for the existing wives and new brides is often born out of an ignorance of what an inmate actually is, and how the life of the couple will be from that day onwards. For the handful of high profile cases in the media, there are literally thousands of inmates who are not violent, are not serving time for violent crimes, do not get into trouble while in prison, and who make the changes necessary in their behaviour while incarcerated to diminish the probability that they will return to prison one day. But those stories do not sell newspapers. The media loves a good juicy tale of a mild mannered librarian who gets involved with a dangerous felon, only to be abandoned, hurt, or worse; the media likes to tell us when things are going wrong, but where are the success stories?

The divorce rate in the US is roughly 40%. Given that this includes all marriages, no matter what your circumstances, chances of staying together is slightly in your favour whether both spouses are in the free world or not. Everyone knows of divorced couples where neither have been in prison. So the assertion that a marriage will fail just because one of the couple is

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