I’d like to share some of the voices of the women in prison that I hear
during my day:
From New Jersey, “We are forced to sleep on the floor in the middle of
winter with bad backs and aching bodies, cold air still blowing from the
vents no matter what the temperature was outside. At two o’clock in the
morning they wake you up and tell you to clear the room. They go through
your personal belongings and then put them in the trash…”
From Texas, “the guard sprayed me with pepper spray because I wouldn’t
take my clothes off in front of vie male guards. Then they carried me to
a cell, laid me down on a steel bed and took, my clothes off. They left
me there in that cello with that pepper spray in my face and nothing to
wash my face with. I didn’t give them any reason to do that; I just
didn’t want to take my clothes off.
From Arizona, “the only thing you get in isolation is a peanut butter
sandwich in the morning, a cheese sandwich in the afternoon and for
supper another peanut butter sandwich. If you want a drink here, you
have to drink toilet water…”
From Missouri, “When I refused to move into a double cell, they came
into my cell and dragged me out and threw me on my back. I was beaten
about my face and head. One of the guards stuck his finger in my eye
deliberately. I was then rolled on my stomach and cuffed on my wrists
with leg irons on my ankle. I as made to walk a thousand feet with the
leg irons. Then they put me in a device called a restraint chair. When
they put you in this chair your hands are cuffed behind your back and
tucked under your buttocks. They stripped me naked…and kept me there
over 9 hours until I fouled myself on my hands which were tucked
underneath me through a hole in the chair.
These past years have been full of thousands of calls and complaints of
an increasingly disturbing nature from prisoners and their families
throughout the United States. The proportion of those complaints coming
from women has risen, with women describing conditions of confinement,
which are torture. They suffer from sexual abuse by staff, with one
woman saying, “I am tired of being gynecologically examined every time
I’m searched.” Another prisoner put it, “that was not part of my
sentence, to…perform oral sex with officers.” Women have reported the
inappropriate use of restraints on pregnant and sick prisoners,
including one woman whose baby was coming at the same time the guard who
had shackled her legs was on a break somewhere else in the hospital.
Other abuses includes medical care, which is often so callous that it is
life threatening. We have received reports about a women who died of
pancreatic disease that went undiagnosed, about a mentally ill women who
was confined naked in a filthy cell where she ingested her won bodily
waste, about a women who suffered burns over 54% of her body and
gradually lost mobility when she was denied the special bandages which
would keep her skin from tightening, and from a woman who unsuccessfully
begged staff or months to allow her to see a doctor. This particular
women, was finally diagnosed with cancer, in enormous pain, with no pain
medication. She died nine months after the diagnosis. I am currently
dealing with a young woman with breast cancer at a prison in New Jersey
where every agonizing stage of her medical care from chemotherapy to
radiation has been achieved only by a war of calls and letters on her
behalf.
Couple all of this with the lack of treatment for substance abuse, lack
of counseling services, concerns about the inappropriate use of
psychotropic medications inappropriate use of restraints and you have an
increasingly clear picture of what life is like for women in prison. Add
the use of prison labor and the picture of the prison system continues
to unfold. If you call to find out about NJ Tourism, you are very likely
talking to a female prisoner – one who is working for $.23 an hour with
no vacations, union or any way to address working conditions.
There is no way to look into any aspect of prison or the wider criminal
justice system without being slapped in the face wit the racism and
white supremacy that prisoners of color endure. If we dig deeper into
these practices, the political function they serve is inescapable.
Police, the courts, the prison system and the death penalty all serve as
social control mechanisms. The economic function they serve is equally
as chilling. I believe that in the US criminal justice system, the
politics of the police, the politics of the courts, the politics of the
prison system and the politics of the death penalty are a manifestation
of the racism and classism which governs so much our lives. Every part
of the criminal justice system falls most heavily on the poor and people
of color, including the fact that slavery was guaranteed in the United
States by the 13th amendment of the US Constitution. Although prison
labor is not a focus today, involuntary prison slavery is real.
I work with Black and Latino youth and those young people tell me that
the police feel like an occupation army as if inner cities were
militarized zones. They feel that the schools and the courts are used as
a feeder system to filter young blacks and Latinos into prisons where
those bodies are suddenly worth a fortune. I’ve heard people say that
the criminal justice system doesn’t work. I’ve come to believe exactly
the opposite – that it works perfectly as a matter of both economic and
political policy.
I don’t believe it is an accident that the young adolescent of color
worth nothing to this country’s economy suddenly generates between 30
and 60 thousand dollars a year once trapped in the criminal justice
system. The expansion of prisons, the court and police systems has been
a boon to everyone from architects, plumbers, and electricians to food
and medical vendors – all with one thing in common – a paycheck earned
by keeping human beings in cages in human warehouses. The
criminalization of poverty is a lucrative business and we’ve replaced
the social safety net with a dragnet. I doubt that this would be
tolerated if we were talking about mostly white folks or mostly rich
folks. Not unlike the US era of chattel slavery, there is a class of
people dependent on mostly poor people and bodies of color as a source
for income. I suspect that these same dynamics are occurring
internationally.
In 2002 the AFSC published a pamphlet called “Our Children’s House”,
which contains the testimonies of the very young, who have been
sentenced to county youth detention facilities. One young woman who was
placed in such a facility when she was 12 said they told her she had no
name that she was now number 5. When I began those interviews, I was
unprepared for youngsters who were so afraid to talk that they wouldn’t
allow the use of their names. They described being held in isolation and
used sexually. They talked of hearing, seeing and smelling things, about
enduring treatment that is inappropriate for anyone, let alone children.
As they spoke it was clear that it was the adults around them who were
the lawless. Not only are these children taken from their families, they
lose any chance at an equitable future.
I sit on the Board of the World Organization For Human Rights/USA. In
1998 we wrote the Shadow Report on the Status of Compliance by the US
Government with the International Convention Against Torture. We found
that the US was not meeting its obligations under that treaty,
mentioning the treatment of women in US prisons in particular. Given
what has happened Abu Grab, given that the potential Attorney General
for the US seems to sanction torture, given that the US heavily exports
its concepts in everything from architecture, use of long term
isolation, use of devices of torture and business philosophies of making
money off of poor, bodies of color – it becomes imperative that more
long term attention is given to what is happening to women in prison
globally. AFSC has become so concerned about the use of isolation,
sometimes keep people in lockdown for years, that we are launching a
nationwide effort to stop this practice in US prisons. That this is
happening to imprisoned men, women and children is unconscionable. The
increase in the number of women in prisons worldwide certainly has
nothing to do with a global increase in the crime rates by women and
girls.
Each and every one of the practices that the girls and women have testified to is in violation of dozens of international Treaties and Covenants. These practices violate the United States Convention Against Torture, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Un Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the UN Convention the Rights of the Child and a dozen other international and regional laws and standards. The practices also fit the United Nations definition of genocide.
We need to alter the core of every system that slavery, racism and
poverty has given birth to, particularly the criminal justice systems.
There are many things we can do to push for social change. The need for
outside advocates on behalf of our sisters in prisons in acute.
Unfortunately, it’s been my experience over the 30 years that women do
not reach out to advocate on their own behalf. Perhaps we are too used
to being the caretakers.
We must stop violations of human rights, particularly those of women and
children. We must change the economic and racial profiling of arrest and
sentencing practices. We need to decriminalize poverty, mental illness
and in many cases, lesbianism. We must eliminate solitary confinement,
torture and the use of devices of torture. We must support a vigorous
monitoring of police, the court and prison systems with a global review
process. We need to ensure enhanced use of international law. We
desperately need to redirect the dollars going into prisons that belong
in communities, in schools. The link between poverty, race,
discrimination, sexual orientation and prisons cannot be denied.
The AFSC has always recognized the existence and continued expansion of
the penal system as a profound spiritual crisis. It is a crisis that
allows children to be demonized. It is a crisis, which legitimizes
torture, isolation and the abuse of power. It is a crisis, which extends
beyond prisons themselves into school and judicial systems. I know each
time we send a child to bed hungry that is violence. That wealth
concentrated in the hands of a few at the expense of many is violence
that the denial of dignity based on race, class or sexual preference is
violence. And that poverty and prisons are a form of stat-manifested
violence.
Many years ago, a Vietnamese sister noted that, “When women become
massively political, the revolution will have moved to a new level. We
need the help of international bodies such as yours to ensure that real,
world wide social change remains a priority. I can think of no surer way
than to be fully present and advocate on behalf of those women and girls
who are being used in the most calculated of ways.
Each of us needs to be clear on the connectedness between slavery and
the criminal justice system, between US domestic policies towards people
of color and US international policies towards countries of color. We
need to develop an international sisterhood of concern and say “ not in
my name” will these atrocities be committed any more. Over the years I
have found it important to remind myself that the Department of
corrections is more than just a set of institutions, it is also a state
of mind.
Bill of Health Rights for Incarcerated Girls, by Girl Talk and Health & Medicine Policy Research Group
Prison Life: A Day, by Marilyn Buck
Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex, by Angela Davis
The Vermont Women's Prison Project , by Mary Field Belenky and Judy Harden
Disabled in Prison, by Delores Garcia
Mapping The Way Home: Reducing Barriers to Women's Reentry After Prison, by Patricia O'Brien
The Prison Industrial Complex in Indigenous California, by Stormy Ogden
Remarks from "Race, Class, Gender and the PIC" a panel discussion that occured as a part of Voices in Time, Lives in Limbo, by Beth Richie
Reproductive Rights in Theory and Practice: The Meaning of Roe v. Wade for Women in Prison, by Rachel Roth
Women's Rights Don't Stop at Jailhouse Door, by Rachel Roth
Beyond Gender-Specific Intervention: Theory-driven Praxis, by Laurie Schaffner
Living Conditions here in CCWF, by Patricia Wright
