In this article, the author examines the main characteristics of women who are serving sentences in prisons. Attention is focused on the fact that women serving sentences in places of deprivation of liberty, being in a closed environment, are influenced by various factors associated with the inability to satisfy the need for free communication, protection from the encroachments of other persons, obtaining the necessary information, belonging to a socially significant group, self-development. All this affects the emergence of psychologically stressful states that adversely affect the cognitive and emotional-volitional sphere of convicted women. The author notes that the idea of the personality of a convicted woman in places of deprivation of liberty should be formed from the results of observation, psychodiagnostic research and operational prevention. Psychological diagnostics makes it possible to identify the possibility of unlawful behavior of convicts in the early stages of development in order to put them on a preventive record. The author comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to compile characteristics of newly arrived convicted women, namely, to use questionnaires, projective methods that allow to determine the self-esteem of the convict and her ability to control her emotions in stressful and conflict situations.