This paper offers an analysis of the position of women in penitentiary institutions. The authors firstly explicate data on the increase in number of incarcerated women in Serbia in the last decades, and clarify the results of the research related to the effects of such penal policy. The second part of the paper contains information obtained on the account of the opportunity to communicate with a female ex-inmate of the Penal Correctional Institution in Požarevac, Serbia. After a thorough documentary analysis of her case records, a series of semi-structured interviews with the former inmate were performed 'face to face', allowing her to put across a traumatic experience of her stay in the penal facility. This account was carefully and accurately noted down and later subjected to content analysis, in order to determine both cognizant and subliminal messages of the interviewee. The authors made an effort to avoid the mistake of generalization, and tried not to make wide-ranging conclusions regarding the existing penal system based on the experiences of one (though atypical) incarcerated person. However, and taking into account the conclusions of other researchers arrived at in other parts of the world, it may be inferred that a penal system which easily resorts to imprisonment as a form of punishment, hardly can achieve the goals put before it by the society. It is obvious that, instead of their re-socialization, a tough penal system imposes passive submission on the convicted individuals, and pushes them toward hypocrisy, paranoid attitudes and mortification of identity. For this reason, one should not be puzzled by the high rates of penitentiary recidivism in contemporary societies.