Pubdate: Thu, 14 Dec 2006
Source: Pasadena Weekly (CA)
Copyright: 2006 Southland Publishing
Contact:  http://www.pasadenaweekly.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4323
Author: Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Note: Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst, social  issues
commentator and the author of "The Emerging  Black GOP Majority"

THE FEMINIZATION OF PRISON

Why More Women -- and Especially Black Women -- Are Behind Bars

Some years ago I briefly worked as a social worker.  Occasionally I 
would visit clients in jail to determine  their eligibility for 
continued benefits. They were all  men -- with one exception. She was 
a young black woman  serving time for theft. She had two small children.

She entered the visiting room handcuffed to another  woman and 
dressed in drab prison garb. We talked  through a reinforced glass 
window. The guards stared  hard and barked out gruff commands to the women.

The idea of a woman in prison then was a novelty. It  isn't anymore. 
According to a recent Justice Department  report on America's jail 
population, women make up  about 10 percent of the America's inmates. 
There are  now more women than ever serving time, and black women 
make up a disproportionate number of these women. They  are twice 
more likely than Hispanic, and over three  times more likely than 
white women, to be jailed.

In fact, black women have almost single-handedly  expanded the 
women's prison-industrial complex. From  1930 to 1950, five women's 
prisons were built  nationally. During the 1980s and 1990s, dozens 
more prisons were built, and a growing number of them 
are  maximum-security women's prisons.

But the prison-building splurge hasn't kept pace with  the swelling 
number of women prisoners. Women's prisons  are understaffed, 
overcrowded, lack recreation  facilities, serve poor quality food, 
suffer chronic  shortages of family planning counselors and services 
and gynecological specialists, drug treatment and child  care 
facilities, and transportation funds for family  visits.

Female prisoners face the added peril of rape and  insensitive 
treatment during pregnancy. A United  Nations report in 1997 found 
that more than two dozen  states permitted pregnant women to be 
shackled while  being transported to hospitals for treatment. A 
report by the National Corrections Information Center revealed  that 
the US is one of only a handful of countries that  allow men to guard 
women, often unsupervised.

Author Donna Ann-Smith Marshall, who served several  years at Central 
California Women's Facility,  California's top maximum security 
prison, in her new  book, "Time on the Inside," tells in shocking and 
graphic detail the callous, often brutal treatment many  women are 
subjected to in women's maximum security  lockups.

Unfortunately, the tepid public debate over the  consequence of 
locking up so many women is riddled with  misconceptions. One is that 
women commit violent crimes  for the same reasons that men do. They 
don't. Women are  less likely than men to assault or murder strangers 
while committing crimes. Two-thirds of the women jailed  assaulted or 
killed relatives or intimates. Their  victims were often spouses, 
lovers or boyfriends. In  many cases they committed violence 
defending themselves  against sexual or physical abuse. Women's 
groups and  even the more enlightened governors have recognized  that 
women who kill abusive husbands or lovers have  acted out of fear, 
and these governors have loosened  parole standards and granted some 
women earlier release  from their sentences.

More women, and especially black women, are behind bars  as much 
because of hard punishment than their actual  crimes. One out of 
three crimes committed by women are  drug related. Many state and 
federal sentencing laws  mandate minimum sentences for all drug 
offenders. This  virtually eliminates the option of referring 
nonviolent first-time offenders to increasingly scarce,  financially 
strapped drug treatment, counseling and  education programs. Stiffer 
punishments for crack  cocaine use also has landed more black women 
in prison,  and for longer sentences than white women (and men).

Then there's the feminization of poverty and racial  stereotyping. 
More than one out of three black women  jailed did not complete high 
school, were unemployed or  had incomes below the poverty level at 
the time of  their arrest. More than half of them were single  parents.

While black men are typed as violent, drug-dealing  "gangstas," black 
women are typed as sexually loose,  conniving, untrustworthy welfare 
queens. Many of the  mostly middle-class judges and jurors believe 
that  black women offenders are menaces to society too.

The quantum leap in black women behind bars has had  devastating 
impact on families and the quality of life  in many poor black 
communities. Thousands of children  of incarcerated women are raised 
by grandparents, or  warehoused in foster homes and institutions. The 
children are frequently denied visits because the  mothers are deemed 
unfit. This prevents mothers from  developing parenting and nurturing 
skills and deeply  disrupts the parent-child bond. Many children of 
imprisoned women drift into delinquency, gangs and drug  use. This 
perpetuates the vicious cycle of poverty,  crime and violence. There 
are many cases where parents  and even grandparents are jailed.

There is little sign that this will change. The public  and 
policymakers are deeply rapped in the damaging  cycle of myths, 
misconceptions and crime-fear hysteria  about crime-on-the-loose 
women. They are loath to ramp  up funds and programs for job and 
skills training, drug  treatment, education, childcare and health and 
parenting skills. Yet, this is still the best way to  keep more women 
from winding up behind bars.
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MAP posted-by: Elaine