“Manhandled, arrested, cuffed, searched, and locked away in the Tombs” is how
AlterNet described
the story of protester Barbara Schneider Reilly, who spent 30 hours in
jail after being arrested at an Occupy Wall Street-related protest in
October 2011.
Reilly
reported:
“During the long, cold night in the Tombs, at some point we asked a
female officer if we could have some blankets. ‘We have no blankets.’
Some mattresses since we were 12 or so people? ‘We have no more
mattresses.’ Some change in exchange for dollar bills so we could call
parents and loved ones? (The one public telephone in the cell would only
take coins.) ‘It’s against regulations.’ Some soap? ‘Maybe we’ll come
up with some soap.’ After no, no, no to every reasonable request, we
wound up with a small jar of soap. Distressing is hardly the word for a
culture of willful neglect and the exercise of what power those officers
held over us for those 30 hours.”
While Reilly’s experience was horrific, it is only a sliver of the
atrocities that over 114,000 women in prisons and jails must endure on a
daily basis. When the article first appeared, I printed it out and
circulated it to several currently incarcerated women and asked how
Schneider’s weekend compared to their own realities.
“It’s always great to see stories like Barbara Schneider’s published.
It’s important that as many people as possible spread the word about
jails, prisons, incarceration and our justice system,” wrote RJ, a woman
who had been incarcerated in Colorado. “As a prisoner myself,
Schneider’s descriptions are definitely familiar: Thousands of people
experience similar processes every day, many for years on end. Each time
a story of incarceration is shared, I hope we think of ALL who are in
jail/prison. Regardless of what has led to our arrest and whether we
have been held for ten hours, ten years, not yet, or never, the same
oppressive system contains us. We all are offered dehumanization and
brutality in the name of order, rehabilitation, deterrence or justice.”
“Her experience was just a tip of the iceberg,” wrote Terrina,
another woman incarcerated in Colorado. “I am, by no means, trying to
minimize her experience because incarceration is horrible for anyone
that goes through it. However, she was blessed that she was somewhere
that the spotlight was being shined on. Can you imagine how the
forgotten people feel? The ones with no family, no support, no
organization standing behind them?”
Terrina describes what the process is like for those entering the prison system:
When someone arrives at DW, you’re stripped,
photographed, poked, prodded, asked a bunch of questions that seem to
have no bearing on your actual crime or personal situation (although the
answers do chart out a path for your life in DOC), and given a piece of
dry stale cake to eat. Yes cake. And that is it for the day. When you
take into account that the prisoners are awake and traveling before 6am,
without food or drink, from the county jail, and scared, anxious and
unsure of the upcoming events, not being fed until 6pm is an awfully
long time.
The women are placed in the first living unit. Although it is called a
LIVING unit, you would think it is more like a kennel. The women are
allowed out of their cell for one hour a day. At that time, they have to
shower, use the phone, and try to learn the rules and regulations of
their new surroundings without any guidance from the officers. Yes, it
is true that there are “Posted Operational Regulations” (PORs) but …
Lord forbid that the officers tell the new inmates how to use the
telephone, when they are allowed to shower, how to get their medication,
if needed, and, if they are pregnant, they are lucky if they are
allowed to receive prenatal treatment for the first month that they are
here. The women live like animals for at least a month before moving to
the next “living” unit. Once they move, they are allowed TWO hours out a
day. No classes, one hour a week at the gym, a minimal church, and
hopefully by now the new girl has found a decent “old number” that can
explain the way of her new world. If not … she’s still shit out of luck.
Unfortunately she still has to deal with the same offices that she’s
been around for the first month. At this time, her telephone system
should be working. However, the case managers that are supposed to be
there to help are not able to explain the phone system, the classes that
are available, the jobs that are attainable, or even the canteen that
should be purchasable. Three to four weeks later and the confusion
begins all over with another “living” unit move. Previously, contact
with the other offenders was restricted altogether. Now you are thrown
into a space set up like the monkey exhibit at most zoos. It is so
overwhelmingly loud and disorganized that many women shut down, get
angry, fight, and begin to behave like the animals they are being
treated like.
In this new building, the inmate is supposed to automatically know
the rules they were never taught, they’re expected to know where to go
and when, which sidewalks to walk on at specific times, who they are and
aren’t allowed to talk to, and are expected to show up to work on time,
usually without knowing that they have even been assigned a job…
Let’s take a moment and discuss the jobs: labor crew, kitchen,
laundry … those are the first jobs available. DOC pays 60 cents a day to
do the work that keeps the facility running. The majority of inmates
MUST pay restitution, which is, of course, taken out of their state pay …
so after a full month of working hard, they are able to spend
approximately $10.63. The only thing that is free in DOC is one roll of
toilet paper a week and one pack of sanitary pads per month. If the
inmate has a heavy menstrual cycle and needs more pads, she has to pay
$4 to get them. Toothpaste, toothbrush, body soap, a brush or comb,
lotion, shampoo, conditioner, hair grease, floss, any hygiene besides
one roll of toilet paper a week, the inmate HAS to pay for. Since I have
been in prison, the prices of canteen have gone up at least every two
to three months. Why hasn’t the rate of our pay? The state is allowed to
charge more for the toothpaste, but unable to pay us enough to purchase
it? Don’t get caught giving away any hygiene if you are lucky enough to
have it because then you can get a write-up for loaning and bartering
or unauthorized possession if you don’t have a receipt for the items in
your room."
These inhumanities are of the everyday variety for women behind bars.
Then there are the other injustices that are all too common in women’s
prisons nationwide:
- Health care: Women in prison are more
likely to be HIV+ than either men in prison or women who are not in
prison. In 2000, women in prison were 60% more likely to have HIV than
men in prison. Women in prison are 36 times more likely than women
outside to have HIV. In addition, prisons are not likely to have
female-specific health care (pregnancy, breast and cervical cancer
screenings, GYN services, etc) and so women’s health needs often go
untreated.
- Parenting: More than 80% of women in
prison are mothers to children under the age of eighteen. Because of the
ways in which parenting is gendered, when a mother goes to prison, she
is far less likely to have a co-parent, partner or family member who is
willing and able to take care of her children. As a result, children of
imprisoned mothers are five times more likely to end up in foster care
than children of incarcerated fathers. This statistic became even more
devastating in 1997 when Congress passed the federal Adoption and Safe
Families Act (ASFA). Under the Act, if a child has been in foster care
for fifteen of the past 22 months, the state has to automatically begin
terminating legal custody. Only three states make exceptions for parents
who are in prison. If a mother is fortunate enough to maintain the
legal rights to her child(ren), the distance of the prison from her home
community makes it less likely that she will ever receive a visit from
her child. More than 50% of mothers in prison reported never having
received a visit from their children.
- Sexual Assault: In 1996, Human Rights Watch released All Too Familiar,
a report documenting sexual abuse of women prisoners throughout the
United States. The report, reflecting the organization’s two-and-a-half
years of research, found that sexual assaults, abuse and rape of women
prisoners by male staff members were common and that women who
complained incurred write-ups, loss of “good time” accrued toward an
early parole and/or prolonged periods in disciplinary
segregation.[1] Little has changed in many prisons since the report’s
release in 1996. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits
gender discrimination in employment, giving both male and female guards
the right to gender-neutral employment in prisons housing prisoners of
the opposite gender. Male staff members have been placed in female
facilities with little to no training on cross-gender supervision and no
procedures for investigating or disciplining staff sexual misconduct.
In Michigan and other states, untrained male officers were assigned to
positions in which they were able to walk, unannounced, into areas where
women dress and undress, shower, and use the toilet. Male guards have
also been given the task of performing body searches on prisoners, which
includes patting down women’s breasts and genital areas. They also
transported women to medical care and were required to observe
gynecological and other intimate medical procedures.[2] It was not until
incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women won a class-action lawsuit
were restrictions on male access put into place.
- Abuse and battering: More than half of
women in state prisons and jails report having experienced physical
and/or sexual abuse.[3] Women are three times more likely than men to
have been physically and/or sexually abused prior to incarceration.[4]
In 1964, peace activist Barbara Deming spent 27 days in jail in
Albany, Georgia. Deming and a group of activists had embarked on a Peace
Walk from Quebec to Guantanamo, the American army base in Cuba. When
the walk reached Georgia, the Peace Walkers found it impossible to
demand peace without also demanding the right of all people — black and
white — to walk together down any street in any city. In Albany, where
the police chief had boasted that he had defeated Martin Luther King
non-violently,[5] the group twice attempted to walk through the White
section of town; each time, they were arrested and brought to the county
jail. Deming was among the group of fifty-four women arrested the
second time. Her fellow Peace Walker Yvonne, who spent first 24 days in
jail and 27 days the second time, wrote: “If there is anything I have
learned by being in jail, it is that prisons are wrong, simply and
unqualifiedly wrong.”[6]
Nearly fifty years later, in 2011, Barbara Schneider Reilly ends her
account of jail on an optimistic note:
“Society must be changed. They
insist on it, and, I hope, will continue to insist. And, not
withstanding the difficulties ahead, we will fight for it.”
One hopes that these fights also recognize and include the struggles of people in prison. As RJ states,
“When we hear and tell our stories, we must think of the
abuse that is churning behind the razor wire at that moment. When we are
released, or when we greet our friends outside the gates, we must think
of the person who is already waiting to fill the vacant bed. We must
imagine what it will take to disable this corrupt industry with its
devastating methods that are carried out under the lie of ‘bettering
society.’ We must not turn our backs on each other!”
Spurred on by prison justice organizers, people in the various Occupy
movements are beginning to realize this and are calling for a National
Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners on Monday, February 20, 2012. There
will be actions across the nation. To find out about the nearest one, go
to:
http://occupy4prisoners.org/actions/.
Victoria Law is a writer, photographer, mother, and Contributing Author for New Clear Vision. She is the author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women(PM Press, 2009), the editor of the zine Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison, and a co-founder of Books Through Bars — NYC.
She is currently working on transforming Don’t Leave Your Friends
Behind, a zine series on how radical movements can support the families
in their midst, into a book.
Notes
[1] Human Rights Watch,
All Too Familiar.6.
[2] Jennifer Bagwell, “Barred from View: How Michigan Keeps the Lid
on Allegations of Widespread Sexual Abuse Against Female Inmates,”
Metro Times: Detroit’s Alternative Weekly, March 24, 1999.
[3] Beth E. Richie and Kay Tsenin,
Female Offenders, Pornography and Prostitution, Child Abuse and Neglect, research forum on women and girls in the justice system for the Department of Justice, 1999.
[4] Caroline Wolf Harlow,
Prior Abuse Reported by Inmates and Probationers, special report for the U.S. Department of Justice, April 1999, 1.
[5] Barbara Deming,
Prisons That Could Not Hold, 6.
[6] Deming,
Prisons That Could Not Hold, 36.
Posts
