National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #45-98 Cruel and Unusual? Women's Prisons
November 11, 1998

Program description and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1998/9845.html

Phillip Babich: Welcome to "Making Contact," an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. This week on Making Contact:-

Jendayi Mayibuye Sakili: In my community, communities of women were going to prison. You know, not just one individual but whole communities of women. I’d be on the outside: "Well where’s so and so...oh, everybody’s in prison."

Felicia Davidson: Even though you incarcerated, you still human. You know the system dehumanizes us so badly to, at some point we have to stop and say, "Okay, this is enough."

Lisa Rudman: According to Amnesty International, for human rights violations in U.S. women’s prisons, these are allegations that activists and prisoners themselves have been raising for years. On this program, we’ll discuss Amnesty’s findings, and we’ll hear from women prisoners and prison activists, who talk about medical neglect and sexual abuse. This show is a production of the National Radio Project’s Women’s Desk. I’m Lisa Rudman, your host this week on Making Contact.

Over the last two decades, the number of U.S. prisoners has tripled. Currently, there are over 1.5 million incarcerated people in the U.S., and women are the fastest growing segment within the prison population. Against a backdrop of the so-called war on drugs, mandatory sentences, and drastic cuts in welfare, women are being imprisoned at a rate two to three higher than men. As fast as new women’s prisons are being built, they are being filled with predominantly poor women, young women, women of color, and undocumented immigrants. 60 percent of the women in state and federal prisons are African American and Latina. Aida Robinson is an ex-prisoner and founder of "Families with a Future." She says that many women are behind bars because of drug related charges.

Aida Robinson: I met a women who was in ten years because she picked up the phone and handed it to her husband. Ten years. They lost their house, they lost their whole assets, and a lot of the "crimes" is that they were loyal...they were just there. Over 80 percent of the women who are in prison are there behind crimes with men, or being there, and they weren’t the initiators. What happens is they wind up doing more time than men because they (the men) knew everything about the operation, and they turned state’s evidence, and they got less time than the women, who knew nothing. The average age is from 35 to 37 years old, who are incarcerated. These are women who are simultaneously taking care of children and older adults. So, society’s really going to pay for this, because this is a negative effect. And most of the women who are inside are there for non-violent crimes. And what’s needed is services.

Lisa Rudman: 80 percent of women in prison are mothers, and most of them are single heads of households. Karen Shain is with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.

Karen Shain: They are basically crimes of survival and crimes that are related to drug abuse or drug addiction. Burglary, possession with a prior, petty theft with a prior. And then, of the women who are there for violet crimes (a great number, although there’s no way of being about to count exactly how many) are there because they have protected themselves or their family members from abusers, either through killing their abusers or assaulting their abusers, or in some way violently fight against abuse. And the problem for that is, if you are a man who beats a woman to death, you are going to get a far lower sentence than if you are a woman who shoots a man to death, because of the weapon enhancement. The amount of time that a man will do to serve a sentence for one form of murder or another, or manslaughter, second degree or etc., is approximately a seventh as long as what a women will do for the same crime. Some of that has to do with the weapon enhancement issues. and some of it has to do with when women move outside the mold, they are much more likely to get a harsher sentence, and they are much less likely to turn somebody else in, as part of a sentence reduction scheme. You know, far more deals are made by men who are able, they actually know better what the whole power structure is of some particular drug ring, and they’re able to broker their way out of some of these long sentences.

Lisa Rudman: There are different court proceedings and sentencing guidelines in the juvenile, state, and federal systems. In general, however, convictions which in the past would have meant probation, now carry a jail or prison term. And, a woman with a felony drug conviction is now banned for life from welfare and public housing. This leaves many women few options once they leave prison. With few after-prison supports, recidivism is high. Darlene Harris has been in and out of jails and prisons for 30 years. Here she is speaking from inside the San Francisco County jail.

Darlene Harris: Prison used to be the place where you went if you screwed up and you tried to get yourself back together for when you got out. Now, nobody’s getting out. They’re putting people away for incredibly long periods of time, so that it’s hard to focus on release for most of people that are going in. They’re sending 19 year-old girls to the pen for life, and lots of them. And, the three-strikes law is just brutal. It’s brutal.

Lisa Rudman: In Little Rock, Arkansas, the Women’s Project works to support women prisoners. Felicia Davidson is a formerly battered woman, an ex-prisoner, and an activist with the Women’s Project.

Felicia Davidson: Well, there’s not many support groups in prison for women, because the structure was made for males. I see a lot of women that’s homeless and poor, and they end up in prison because they’re trying to get something to eat. You know, over the years, you’ve seen the non-violent people locked up faster and quicker than the violent ones. You know, for someone to kill someone, they get five or six years, but somebody that write a hot check or steal a credit card gets 15 to 20. You know, and my thing is if you don’t treat them and teach them how to live in this society with the little money they have, we going to continue to build prisons.

Lisa Rudman: For a look at health conditions for women in prison, we now turn to Joyce Miller, who is with the National Network for Women in Prison.

Joyce Miller: There are a number of documented cases, lawsuits, statements from prison staff, and testimony from women themselves, as to the gross neglect of basic medical care for women prisoners. Karen Shain is with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.

Karen Shain: The people who get the worst medical care in prison, and this is true for men as well as women, are the people who are there doing life sentences, and the people who are almost out. Those are the people who are not going to get medical care because it’s too expensive. They’re on their way out anyway. Let it wait until they’re ‘on the street.’ If they’re there for life, the shorter they live, the cheaper they are.

Joyce Miller: Women prisoner’s who are serving short sentences, wind up with a virtual death sentence because of the lack of health care, which sometimes kills them. Karen Shain describes that women with longer sentences are tortured longer.

Karen Shain: Sherry Chapman, who is a woman, she is alive, she’s in the California Institution for women, she found...the first lump in her breast that she found was in 1985. She tried to go see the doctor at that time. She soon found lumps in both breasts. By 1993, when she still hadn’t had a mammogram, one of these lumps was visible even with her shirt on. She finally had a mammogram in March of ‘93, and that was the first mammogram after trying for eight years, since 1985. In 1993 she had a mammogram. The doctor said she needed immediate biopsy. It took nine more months before she was biopsied and had a mastectomy. By that time...soon after that, she had a second mastectomy. Then she has uterine cancer. She had a hysterectomy. She’s still a lifer. She’s still alive. She’s suing the state of California, and she had a good chance of winning. But what kind of life is that? I don’t even know the nature of her crime, but she wasn’t given a capital sentence and she was certainly not told to be tortured, which is basically what breast cancer does, but, you know, her entire life, for the last 10 years, has been constant pain for her.

Joyce Miller: Women inmates are routinely denied access to a physician. Dana L’Wood was in prison for 13 months at Valley State Prison in California, and spoke out at a demonstration there in October, 1998.

Dana L’Wood: In my experience as a drug addict, I’m a heroin addict, an alcoholic in recovery...and those behaviors led me to other behaviors that led me to prison. Which in itself is not something that I think is wrong. It’s only after I got to prison that I found out that I had no rights as a human being. That there was no treatment for my illness, which is drug addiction, which I do consider an illness. There’s no treatment for that...there’s no treatment for other medical issues. Any treatment that there is, is like Band-Aid treatment. They will give you psychotropic drugs before they’ll give you an aspirin. Women are not taken seriously that they are ill, and if they are taken seriously, the medical people that they have inside of the prison are so inept and so unable to actually care for the women, even though in this facility here in Valley State Prison there is a hospital with state of the art equipment and no staff.

Joyce Miller: Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla is the largest women’s prison in the world, with 3500-plus inmates. In 1995 prisoners there, joined by prisoners at the California Institution for Women in Frontera, sued the California Department of Corrections for negligent medical care. The case, entitled Shumate versus Wilson, was settled in 1997. Women prisoners nationally are beginning to speak up and lead the struggle for adequate medical care. Prisoners took risks and suffered retaliation for speaking up. Activists and lawyers are working together with the prisoners to keep up the public pressure.

Lisa Rudman: That was Joyce Miller, who is with the National Network for Women in Prison.

In October, 1998, Amnesty International, kicked off a year-long campaign with a scathing report on human rights in the United States. Much of the report focused on prisons. Elaine Beale reads from the Amnesty Report.

Elaine Beale: The report states: Everyone has the right not to be tortured or ill-treated. However, every day, in jails and prisons across the U.S.A. this right is being violated. Pregnant women, for example, are usually held is some form of mechanical restraint while being transported, and sometimes while in hospital. Shackling can greatly increase the risk of falling or injury to the woman or the fetus, because she cannot use her hands to protect her body. Health care in many facilities is seriously inadequate. Complaints include: grossly deficient treatment for the mentally ill; lack of provision for women’s health needs, failing to deliver prescribed drugs, and refusing or delaying necessary medical treatment. Referring to an incident in the Maricopa Country jail in Arizona, the report goes on to state: Annette Romo, a young pregnant woman, pleaded in vain with staff for medical help when she began bleeding, in 1997. She eventually fell unconscious and was rushed to hospital. Her baby died. Amnesty’s report declared: Physical and sexual violence are endemic in many prisons and jails. According to Amnesty, in some institutions rape and sexual abuse have persisted because inmates fear retaliation, and feel too vulnerable to complain. The report calls upon the U.S. to monitor conditions and enforce standards that are consistent with International Human Rights standards.

Lisa Rudman: That was Elaine Beale reading from the Amnesty report.

Shereen Meraji: You are listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or you would like to know how to get involved with Making Contact, please give us a call. It's toll free, 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcript orders.

Lisa Rudman: According to the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, sexual abuse sometimes occurs during medical treatment. They report instances of doctors using rough and repeated pelvic exams as a form of rape. And the Coalition says lesbians are sometimes targeted for attack if they seek medical care. The way women are intimidated and sexually abused in prison, is a magnified reflection of women’s oppression in the larger society.

Ramona Africa: There is not a women’s institution in this country that is staffed by just women.

Lisa Rudman: Former political prisoner Ramona Africa.

Ramona Africa: There are always male administrators and guards. Guards that walk the block, that can come in your cell at will, that can look in your cell at will. And most cells in prison are simply a small room with a toilet, a sink, and a bed. And if you have to change clothes, go to the bathroom, wash or whatever in your room, then you’re talking about a situation where a man can walk by and look in your cell, or come in your cell, at any point. We’re also talking about the fact that the reality is that women, generally, cannot beat a man. You know, even a physically strong woman, nine chances out of ten, a woman cannot beat a man. So you’re talking about a very intimidating situation for most women, who feel like they are basically at the mercy.

Lisa Rudman: Abuse stems from verbal harassment to groping, pinching, rubbing, pat searching, cavity searching, and rape. Human Rights Watch published an in-depth analysis entitled: All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State prisons. Eleven prisons in 5 states and the District of Columbia were studied. Wydney Brown, of Human Rights Watch, spoke at the Critical Resistance National Prison Conference in September, 1998.

Wydney Brown: One of the things that I’ve done is looked at the training materials that they have in different states. So far my all-time "favorite" training materials come from New York State, and they have are new, these are really newly...in fact, they’ve just been implemented, called...it’s for corrections officers, and it’s called: "You and the Female Offender." Now in 1996, New York finally passed a law criminalizing custodial sexual misconduct. And basically the whole thing is: Watch out for those manipulative bitches. They are just going to get you. You know, and they’re needy, they’re manipulative, and they’re going to get you. And never once it says, "Don’t have sex with the women." It doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say, "Don’t grope ‘em. Don’t say harassing things to them." It says none of that. It basically says to be alert because they’re going to lure you into their ways.

Lisa Rudman: Brown adds that sexual abuse is often ignored or tolerated.

Wydney Brown: The penal system’s just basically turning a blind eye to it. So we looked at what are the mechanisms when women are coping with this, and we found for the most part, grievance proceedings simply don’t work. And there are several reasons they don’t work. One reason will be that when women write grievances, they never get outside the system. So if they’re grieving a guard, it’s the Corrections department that does the investigation. Well, that makes no sense. There’s a reason why in the U.S., for instance, we promote civilian complaint review boards for police brutality. You don’t have the agency in which the person’s employed policing itself. The second thing is, almost invariably, the guard who’s being grieved would find out about it, and there’s no protection for the women. And then, finally, if it came down to a question of the guard’s word versus the woman’s word, the guards are believed. You know, and I think this is a reflection of the old historical issue of he said, she said, in any context. And then you put it in a prison context, and it’s exacerbated.

Lisa Rudman: Robin Lucas, a former prisoner, knows the cost of speaking up.

Robin Lucas: Tonight I’m here because I was given a 33-month sentence, and I served 30 months in a federal facility in Dublin. It was a great blow, a big pill to swallow. I had never been in trouble. It was for credit card conspiracy, a non-violent crime. Once I accepted the sentence, and took the initiative to assume my responsibility and pay my debt back to society, I turned myself in to the Dublin facility. I had never been to prison, I’d never been to jail. So I knew nothing about the system. I’m probably not the first woman to be assaulted, and probably not the last, in any facility, whether it’s federal, state, or local. But I’m here tonight to give my testimony, a living testimony, of what happened in prison to me. Once my door was unlocked, I was in a special housing unit in a men’s detention center, in between a women’s camp and a women’s federal facility, my door was opened in the middle of the night and a male inmate was allowed to come in. I refused his advances and asked myself, is this a part of my punishment? Is this the reason why I’m here? Well, I thought it was wrong and I spoke up about it. I went straight to the captain, who was over all staff members, officials, and officers, and gave an affidavit.

Lisa Rudman: Lucas was returned to the same unit, and three weeks later, she was gang raped, and beaten nearly unconscious.

Robin Lucas: I went back to the men’s housing unit, and three weeks later, I was assaulted. I was beaten, held down, handcuffed by three individuals. As I asked the assistant warden (once I had reached to the outside to my family and friends, and they had reached to my lawyers) was this a part of my punishment? Was this a part of me coming to prison, what happened to me? It was in their policy already. An inmate makes an accusation of such nature, they should be removed to protective custody, and that officer should be removed from that site, which was not done. Nothing was done.

Lisa Rudman: Lucas and two other women brought a civil rights lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The women say they were sexually assaulted, beaten, sold by guards as sex slaves, and subjected to retaliation.

Robin Lucas: We went public and the government came to us with an offer. My question was, "What are you guys going to do to change your prisons?"

Lisa Rudman: The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute any of the prison employees. But an out of court settlement gave the women $500,000 and specified changes in policy and training.

Across the country, prison officials and lawmakers are attempting to limit access to inmates and their stories. Tori Marlin is a journalist for the Chicago Reader.

Tori Marlin: At one point I was put in a room with women in a cafeteria, and I had a list of women that they were letting me talk with. And they left me in this crowded room while they brought in the women on my list. And when I was sitting there waiting, I would turn and talk to someone. Well, I was banned because these women weren’t on my list, so it wasn’t like I was conducting interviews, I was just chatting. I was also banned from the jail. I’ve since been back to the Illinois prisons, this was a while ago, I think they forgot about that incident. I was banned from the County jail because I wrote a story about how women were being illegally strip searched. There was a lawsuit. The sheriff was violating a court order in continuing to strip search women. I wrote about that, now I can’t get into the jail. So, I mean I was told, "We didn’t like that article." Well, the judge ruled against you. I reported on it. So, it’s definitely a problem.

Lisa Rudman: John Willmerding, Willmerding is with the Campaign for Restorative Justice. He tried to expose rapes of women in prison while he worked for the Vermont Department of Corrections.

John Willmerding: You have murders by prison guards, you have prison rapes in Vermont, rapes of women by prison guards in prison, and I was fired from the Vermont Department of Corrections about two years ago for publicizing some of these things. The man who had me fired was the local prosecutor, and as it happens, I’m currently running for his office. In Vermont, it’s no different. I was fired in part because I raised the controversy which I’d heard...I didn’t hear about it through the Correctional System, I heard about it through a wonderful organization called "Stop Prisoner Rape." And S.P.R. told me that...the founder of S.P.R. told me about this rape, and I took it up with the Department of Corrections in Vermont. That’s one of the reasons why they fired me.

Lisa Rudman: Robin Levy, from the Women’s Institute for Leadership, believes activism and educational outreach can coincide with the United Nations report to be released in April, 1999. In June, 1998, a U.N. special rappateur on violence against women came to the U.S. to look into reports of abuse of incarcerated women. She visited federal and state prisons, and Immigration and Naturalization service detention facilities, in six states.

Robin Levy: She met with prison activists who provided her with information. She met with formerly incarcerated and currently incarcerated women. And what she is doing right now, she is preparing a report that examines the human rights abuses that these women face. And that report is going to be hopefully finished in November, but officially released in April, to the United Nation Human Rights Commission. And that’s going to bring a lot of international attention on prison abuses in the United States. And to that degree opportunity where you have the international attention. And then at the same time what we hope to come from at W.I.L.D. is also to have a lot of local attention. That all these women prison groups, these local prison groups, that have been working on this for years and years and years, to take this opportunity of bringing international attention and then putting local pressure. So for instance, a women’s prisoner group in Iowa can then take the opportunity, write an op ed, write a letter to the editor and say. "Well, that’s very interesting that there’s been this U.N. statement, and in addition, these are the abuses that women in Iowa undergo, women in prison in Iowa." And we feel this is a moment to really bring pressure and bring grass roots activism.

Lisa Rudman: As a side note, the special rappateur has been barred from visiting three Michigan prisons, which are accused of widespread sexual misconduct against women prisoners. In California, the U.N. representative was allowed a tour of the main facility at Valley State Prison for Women. But, she was denied access to the high security unit. That’s where there’s an ongoing campaign against multiple incidents of physical and sexual abuse.

Activists are linking the struggle for human rights for women prisoners to the rights of women outside of prison. This means challenging poverty, sexism, racism, and abuse. Jendayi Mayibuye Sakili lives in Indianapolis and is on the board of the National Network for Women in Prison.

Jendayi Mayibuye Sakili: I was a recidivist, you know, I was in and out of prison. I was in prison five times, and I wanted to know, how could I stop coming to prison. Each time I would get out of prison, I would say, "Oh, never again, I’m not coming back. But I didn’t have the skills of how not to go to prison. So, after getting those skills, those tools to help me stay out of prison, I decided that I wanted to help other women, because in my community, communities of women were going to prison. You know, not just one individual but whole communities of women. I’d be on the outside: "Well where’s so and so...oh, everybody’s in prison." So, I got together, I and a couple of other formerly incarcerated women, and we created a program that would help support women once they get out. We didn’t have money, but what we did have, we had a hope. That we could give them some information, just share with them how we did it. How did I make it out here without going back this time?

Lisa Rudman: That’s it for this edition of Making Contact. - a Look at Women in Prison. This program has been a production of the National Radio Project’s Women’s Desk. Thanks for listening. And special thanks this week to Sue Supriano, Maria Gilardin, Laura Saponara, Dorothy Kidd, and Sasha McGee, for recorded portions. Erik Hamako, Shereen Meraji, and Phillip Babich provided production assistance. I’m Lisa Rudman.

Phillip Babich: If you want more information about the subject of this week’s program, call the National Radio Project, at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts, or if you’d like to make a comment or suggestion for future programs. Making Contact is an independent production funded by individual contributors. We’re committed to providing a forum for people who are not often heard in mass media. Our national producer is David Barsamian. Phillip Babich is our managing producer. Our senior advisor is Norman Solomon. Shereen Meraji is our production assistant. Peggy Law is our executive director. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. For everyone at Making Contact, thanks for listening.