Assumptions about gender role socialization have dominated explanations for gender differences in responses to incarceration. This study suspended those gender comparisons, which produce a focus on homosexuality and kinship networks in women's prisons, to determine how women's pre-prison experiences, in the context of two different institutions, influenced the way they served their sentences. The study analyzed in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of 70 female inmates housed in California's oldest prison for women and in the State's newest prison for women. The two institutions differed in structure, size, and management philosophy, and, accordingly, necessitated consideration of moderating situational effects. Women's adaptations to prison were likely as much or more a product of the nature of women's corrections at a particular time and place as they were a product of the nature of women themselves. The ability to "do your own time" was shaped by particular dispositions of power and practices of control. Notes, tables, references