Walshe: The ordeal of being gay in prison.

I've been hearing from queer prisoners under attack at the AZ Department of Corrections lately, and will have some excerpts form their letters in the weeks to come as I struggle to get at least one of them into protective custody before he gets hurt. In the meantime, this brief article is a good way to open the discussion - I've been impressed with how hard Sadhbh Walshe has worked on exposing human rights violations in our prisons this past year. Check out her other work at the Guardian...

---from the Guardian----

The grim truth of being gay in prison.
Sadhbh Walshe
March 7, 2012

In 1984, when Calvin Burdine was awaiting sentencing for allegedly stabbing his gay lover to death, the prosecuting attorney encouraged the jury in his closing remarks to award Burdine the death penalty, rather than life in prison, on the grounds that sending a gay man to prison was akin to sending a kid to a candy store. After 17 minutes of deliberation, the jury obliged and sentenced Burdine to die. His death sentence was later overturned (mostly because Burdine's public defender had slept through much of his trial), but the homophobic thinking – that prison is some kind of paradise for gay men – lingers on.

The reality of life in prison for homosexuals and transgender individuals does not appear to reflect this myth. One young man named Rodney, imprisoned for fraud and check-forging, sent me a detailed account of his life so far in prison. He described a litany of brutal rapes, assaults, beatings and, eventually, the total abandonment of his male identity as his only means of survival in the hyper-masculine and often homophobic prison environment. His account suggests that far from being a paradise, prison for gay men can be a living hell.

Within days of his first entering prison, the 23-year-old Rodney claimed he was the victim of three separate sexual assaults, involving five different inmates. The prison he was first sent to did actually have a separate tier for gay inmates, but according to Rodney, because he did not "appear overly effeminate" during his classification, he was placed with the general population; and because it was supposedly rare to have a gay person slip through the cracks of the system, his fellow inmates took full advantage.

"My first week or so in general population was hell on earth. Physical, mental and emotional torture. After being raped, I performed acts by request. It was understood and expected. I had no means to protect myself, being only 23 and scared for my life.

"I dared not report anything because I was clearly warned that my life would be in jeopardy should I do so. I quickly learned that a snitch is a worse label than a fag.

"Against popular opinion, jail is not heaven for a homosexual. Nothing is heaven about being intimidated into performing sexual acts. It is also rape, just like the three forcible rapes were.

"True enough, I am attracted to men and always have been, but in life [outside], it's my choice whom I share a bed with; it's intimate and personal. Having my mouth and anus aggressively penetrated by several strangers is anything but."

He went on to report how one of his rapists took a fancy to him and "purchased" him from the tier rep for $20. Even though he was thereby essentially enslaved by his new "prison husband", he was grateful – because his days of "being the communal bitch were over". He said he tried to do whatever his prison husband wanted or needed, including cleaning his cell, washing his clothes, preparing his food, and whatever else his "husband" wanted or needed, including, of course, being available for sex – because "he did what I wanted and needed – kept other inmates off me."

As time wore on and "husbands" came and went, Rodney perfected the art of being a "prison ho", as his only means of surviving intact. This involved establishing a female name and identity, learning how to speak when spoken to, "respect his man" and emasculating himself to the point where he could not stand while urinating. There is nothing about the experience that could be considered enjoyable.

"I've heard before that 'jail is a faggot's dream.' I assure you that cliché is not the case. Gay men who do not attempt to hide their sexuality are forced into passive and submissive roles. To live with some standard of equality, we have to trade in our manhood. We are completely emasculated. It's a form of technical castration. The role of woman is forced upon us and any rebuttal is considered a sign of disrespect. My way of thinking about myself and my sexuality has been permanently altered."

It's difficult to assess how typical Rodney's prison experience is, but numerous studies conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on anonymous inmate surveys, have shown that gay and transgender inmates are among the most targeted groups for sexual victimization. Until fairly recently, little has been done to help them. Just Detention International (JDI), an organization whose aim is to eradicate prison rape (pdf), is trying to change that.

JDI has been working with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to establish "sensitive needs yards" (pdf), where gay, transgender and other vulnerable inmates can serve out their time in safety. Several prisons operated by the CDCR have now established sensitive needs yard with some success, and the JDI is hoping that other states will adopt this model.

In the meantime, prisoners like Rodney have been forced to make their peace with their "prison ho" fate.

"I've grown to realize that I am a man and being a prison ho is an act."

It is not, however, an act that Rodney or any other inmate should be forced to perform.

Vikki Law on race, gender, and justice.

Excellent essay by Vikki Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. The second edition is about to be released, and will include the story of the resistance to exploitation and abuse of prisoners at Martori Farms in Arizona. AIDS activist/former political prisoner Laura Whitehorn writes the introduction.

-------from TRUTH-OUT.org---------

No Justice When Women Fight Back 

Friday, 31 August 2012 00:00  
By Victoria Law, 
Truthout | News Analysis

What do a nineteen-year-old lesbian from New Jersey, a 23-year-old trans woman in Minneapolis and a 31-year-old mother in Florida have in common? All three were attacked, all three fought back and all three were arrested. All three are currently in prison while their attackers remain free. Oh, yes, and all three are black women.

Marissa Alexander is a 31-year-old mother of three. She is also a survivor of violence at the hands of her ex, Rico Gray. In 2009, Alexander obtained a restraining order against Gray. Learning that she was pregnant, she amended it to remove the ban on contact between her and Gray while maintaining the rest of the restraining order.

On August 1, 2010, nine days after Alexander had given birth to their daughter, Gray attacked her in her own home. "He assaulted me, shoving, strangling and holding me against my will, preventing me from fleeing all while I begged for him to leave," Alexander recounted in an open letter to supporters.
Alexander escaped into the garage, but realized that she had forgotten the keys to her truck and that the garage's door opener was not working. She retrieved her gun, which was legally registered, and re-entered her home to either escape or grab her cell phone to call for help. "He came into the kitchen ... and realized I was unable to leave ... he yelled, 'Bitch I will kill you!' and charged toward me. In fear and a desperate attempt, I lifted my weapon up, turned away and discharged a single shot in the wall up in the ceiling." Gray called the police and reported that Alexander had shot at him and his sons. Alexander was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Alexander attempted to invoke Stand Your Ground, but a pre-trial judge ruled that she could have escaped her attacker through the front or back doors of her home. During her trial, the jury was not allowed to see several letters, written by Gray's former wives, girlfriends and in-laws, that recounted his history of abuse, including pistol-whippings, beatings, stripping them of their clothing and super-gluing door locks on them. Several letters also recounted instances in which Gray called the police after he had attacked them, claiming that they had attacked him. (In one instance, Gray stabbed himself with a fork and asked his younger son to tell the police that his girlfriend had done it.) In a sixty-six page deposition, Gray admitted to abusing all five of the women with whom he had children, including Alexander.

Instead of taking these facts into consideration, prosecutor Angela Corey added Florida's 10-20-LIFE sentencing enhancement, mandating a 20-year minimum sentence when a firearm is discharged.

Not an Anomaly: Race, Gender and the Justice System

Alexander's case is not an anomaly. Other women of color have defended themselves only to find the legal system more eager to prosecute and punish them than their assailants.

In August 2006, nineteen-year-old Patreese Johnson and six friends from Newark, New Jersey, took the train to New York's West Village, a neighborhood historically known for its LGBTQ friendliness. As the women walked down the street, they were sexually propositioned by a man named Wayne Buckle. Buckle followed them, threatening to rape them and then physically attacked, choking one, ripping hair from their scalps and spitting on them. The women defended themselves and, at some point, were assisted by two unknown men. During the altercation, Buckle was stabbed. The women were arrested while the men left the scene.

All seven were black lesbians. In addition, three were masculine-appearing. "Their treatment [by the media and legal system] has been reflective of what they look like," noted one supporter who needed to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals at work. Johnson agrees, writing recently, "Me being black and young, the jury, judge and DA's minds was already made up." (Letter, July 18, 2012.)

Police refused to credit the women's statements, those of other witnesses and, ultimately, that of Buckle himself, who stated that the two men were responsible for stabbing him. Both the media and the prosecution framed them as a "lesbian wolf pack" and "killer lesbians." Both media and prosecution also played on racialized fears around gang violence: Although none of the women had ever been in conflict with the law, media and prosecutors described them as a "gang." In addition, neither the judge nor the prosecutor differentiated between the charge of "gang assault" (two or more people acting in concert to cause injury) and gang membership.

Three of the women accepted plea bargains and served six months; the remaining four - Venice Brown, Terrain Dandridge, Renata Hill and Patreese Johnson - became known as the New Jersey Four; they pled not guilty. They received sentences ranging from three-and-a-half to eleven years in prison.

Upon appeal, charges against Dandridge were dismissed while Brown and Hill were granted a retrial and subsequently accepted plea agreements. Johnson's sentence was reduced from eleven to eight years. She remains in prison today. Dwayne Buckle was never arrested nor charged for attacking the women.

As reported last year in Truthout, 23-year-old CeCe McDonald, a young black transgender woman, and her friends were walking to the grocery store in Minneapolis when she was first verbally harassed, then physically attacked by the white patrons standing outside a bar. During the attack, a bar patron smashed a glass into McDonald's face, slicing her cheek. As more people joined in the attack, Dean Schmitz, who had instigated the verbal harassment, was stabbed and later died in the hospital. McDonald was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The woman who smashed glass into McDonald's face was never arrested or charged.

During pre-trial motions, the judge ruled against McDonald's ability to introduce evidence showing that the attack against her was motivated by her race and gender identity: Both Schmitz's swastika and his three previous convictions for violent assault were ruled inadmissible. The judge also refused to allow an expert witness to testify about the pervasive and systemic violence faced by trans people on a daily basis. (Letter from CeCe McDonald, July 19, 2012.)

Faced with second-degree murder charges, a hostile court and the possibility of twenty to forty years, McDonald pled guilty to second-degree manslaughter due to negligence and was sentenced to forty-one months in prison. "She [also] has to pay for her attacker's funeral," noted Billy Navarro of the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition and a member of her support committee. (Interview, July 26, 2012.)

These cases - and their verdicts - reflect an all-too-common reality in the United States: When women, particularly women of color, defend themselves, they often find themselves assaulted twice - first by their attacker, then by the legal system. The zealous prosecution, as well as the lack of charges against their attackers, reflects the pervasive and socially sanctioned violence against women, particularly women of color and the prevailing notion that women should not fight back. "Me being female, I wasn't supposed to fight back," Johnson noted. (Letter, July 18, 2012.)
"People Were Outraged and Wanted to Get Involved"

Shortly after the New Jersey Four's arrest made headlines, FIERCE (Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment), an LGBT youth of color group in the West Village, organized efforts to secure lawyers, raise money for legal expenses, attend the trial, write letters and send care packages to the women while they were in prison. In California, queer people of color formed the Bay Area NJ4 Solidarity Committee, which created a web site to provide up-to-date information about the women's appeals, helped fundraise and stayed in contact with the women throughout their ordeal. Both groups continue to support Patreese Johnson during her incarceration.

In Minneapolis, those who worked with trans youth took note of McDonald's arrest. "It was clear immediately that she needed a lot of support," stated Navarro. Within the first weeks, supporters secured lawyers and formed the CeCe McDonald Support Committee. They publicized the case, gathering over 15,000 signatures and dozens of letters from organizations and prominent individuals worldwide demanding that the charges against McDonald be dropped. They then presented these to the prosecutor's office.

The Committee continues coordinating public support during McDonald's incarceration. Recently, despite McDonald's prescription and court order to receive twenty milligrams of hormones, prison staff were administering only six milligrams. Supporters from around the world flooded the prison with phone calls demanding that McDonald receive the full twenty milligrams, forcing the prison to follow the prescription order.

"The support from everyone everywhere keeps me motivated," McDonald wrote in a recent letter. "It showed that people care not only about these issues that are so easily 'swept under the rug' by society, but about how I am doing and keeping me afloat." (Letter, July 19, 2012.)

Women of Color, Self-Defense and Public Support in the 1970s and Today

In 1974, two men took Inez Garcia from her California home into a nearby alley. There, one man raped her while the other blocked the exit. Garcia later shot and killed the man who had blocked her escape. She was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

Her case attracted extensive support, especially from those in the women's movements. Many were outraged that Garcia had been arrested while her rapist remained free. Supporters publicized her case at concerts, political meetings, church services and any venues where they might find potential sympathizers. They packed the courtroom, where the judge instructed the jurors not to consider the rape. Garcia was convicted and sentenced to five years to life in prison.

Supporters continued to publicize her case, tying it to the larger issue of a woman's right to defend herself against assault. They approached feminist lawyer Susan Jordan to take over Garcia's defense. Jordan appealed the case and had the conviction reversed because of the judge's instructions not to consider the rape. At the retrial, Jordan made rape an integral part of the case; Garcia was acquitted. "There was a change in consciousness going on in the country. We rode the wave of it," Jordan reflected in a 2007 interview. (Interview with Susan Jordan, June 18, 2007.)

The cases of Marissa Alexander, Patreese Johnson and CeCe McDonald, while more well-known than those of many other women of color trapped in the legal system for fighting back, have not achieved the same level of support that Inez Garcia received three decades earlier. Why not?

"The groups that came together [around the NJ4 case] were grassroots queer groups of color," recalled a supporter. "The larger LGBTQ organizations are fighting for gay marriage, not what youth are going through. And people are scared of women who stand up for themselves and fight back."

Katie Burgess, director of the Trans Youth Support Network and part of McDonald's support committee, has a similar opinion: "CeCe is at the intersection of multiple oppressions. On the local front, we saw people come together around the issue like never before - social workers, insurrectionary anarchists, lawyers, youth, GLBT people of color groups came together and built coalitions. But of course, racism still exists in LGBT communities. Homophobia and transphobia still exist in communities of color. Sometime people don't want to recognize the whole picture." (Interview, July 30, 2012.)
Navarro agrees that racism and transphobia kept many away: "CeCe doesn't get the same level of support because most people see someone that they've been taught to be afraid of, not someone's daughter."

However, both Burgess and Navarros acknowledge that the support McDonald received dramatically affected the outcome of her case. "CeCe being a young African-American trans woman living in poverty made them [the prosecution] think that she didn't have the resources to defend or advocate for herself," Navarro stated. "Not until just before the trial did they realize how much support she had." Navarro also noted that McDonald was offered several plea bargains and, with each plea bargain, the amount of time diminished. (Interview, July 26, 2012.)

Both Johnson and McDonald recognize that support needs to extend beyond their individual cases to address the broader issues of race, class, gender and the justice system: "I would hate to think that the law is going to continue putting our women in prison for defending themselves," Johnson wrote recently. "Support me by making a change, starting with one's self. It's not really about me; it's about women overall." (Letter, July 18, 2012.)

McDonald has similar thoughts: "The real issues are the ones that affect all prisoners. People should get involved in changing policies that keep people in prisons, like exclusion from employment, housing, public assistance," she wrote. "These are just a few things that will keep people out of prisons and lead to the dismantling of these facilities." (Letter, July 19, 2012.)

While the legal process is over for both Johnson and McDonald, Alexander has not given up. Her first husband, Lincoln Alexander and her sister Helena Jenkins, have formed the Committee to Free Marissa Alexander. Groups and individuals have come together in Florida and across the country to continue the campaign for her freedom.

As seen with CeCe McDonald and the New Jersey Four, support can make a difference. As McDonald stated, one month after her sentencing, "I didn't let this incident diminish me. Instead, it made me grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Not just for myself, but for my friends, families and supporters who tell me that my struggle against discrimination and me defending myself give them hope and motivation to be strong, to fight for their beliefs and to be the people they want to be instead of hiding or conforming. So this isn't just for me, it's for all of us!" (Letter, July 19, 2012.)

Boston, 2012

Queer Injustice: Punishing gender nonconformity.

(The following selection is excerpted from "Caging Deviance," a chapter in Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. The authors highlight the specific instances in which the penal system punishes gender nonconformity and queerness not only through disciplinary prison regulations, but the denial of health care to queer inmates, particular those living with HIV/AIDS.)

(as posted at Women & Prison.org)

Caging Deviance
by Joey L. Mogul and Andrea J. Ritchie

ENFORCEMENT OF GENDER CONFORMITY THROUGH PRISON REGULATIONS

Beyond placement decisions enforcing gender binaries and punishing gender nonconformity, prisoners' gender identity and expression are denied and suppressed in innumerable ways through prison regulations.

First, the criminal legal system as a whole refuses to recognize transgender prisoners' chosen names and gender identities. As a result, transgender people are routinely referred to by the names assigned to them at birth on their badges, medical records, and other identifying documents throughout their incarceration, and they are addressed by guards and prison officials in a manner dictated by the gender assigned to them at birth. Far worse, many transgender prisoners are called "that," "it," "faggot," and other homophobic and transphobic slurs by prison officials.

Transgender prisoners are also deprived of access to clothing matching their gender identity. Frequently, transgender women are deprived of bras, even when obviously medically necessary, with potentially serious health consequences. In some circumstances, the mere possession of a bra may subject a prisoner in a male facility to discipline. It is also routine for transgender women confined in men's institutions to be denied makeup and other cosmetics generally provided to other female inmates of the same security classification. Transgender men housed in women’s institutions are forced to wear "feminine" attire, a practice they experience as profoundly violative. One transgender man housed in a California prison reported that "at one point I was being made to wear a dress, despite the fact that no one else was forced to. It was just to humiliate me.” Moreover, many transgender people report they are forced to groom their beards and cut their hair or nails to conform to traditional male and female gender presentations.

The rigid enforcement of gender norms, as well as the use of segregation and denial of even basic needs, as a means of regulating prisons as queer spaces, extends to the provision of- or failure to provide- medical care inside penal institutions.
DENIAL OF PRISON HEALTH CARE

The poor quality of health care in U.S. prisons is well documented. Where the lives of queers and HIV-positive prisoners, who may or may not be LGBT, are concerned, provision or denial of health care is used as an additional location of punishment through institutional forms of derision, dehumanization, abuse, and erasure of humanity. For instances, the vast majority of state and county penal institutions deny transgender prisoners access to hormone treatment necessary for the maintenance of their gender identity. Although the generally accepted standards of care for what the American Psychiatric Association characterizes as “gender identity disorder” (GID) in the DSM-IV dictate that access to hormone therapy can be medically necessary, penal authorities insist on denying transgender people such treatment on the grounds that it is merely “cosmetic.”

In very few states, and in federal prisons governed by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), transgender prisoners can receive hormone treatment, albeit under very limited and restrictive conditions. In most cases it is the official policy that prisoners can only continue to receive hormone treatment in prison where they can demonstrate they were prescribed and were taking such medication prior to their incarceration. Not only is this the only condition for which individuals must prove they were receiving treatment prior to incarceration in order to obtain treatment in prison, in many cases, this is an insurmountable obstacle. Due to lack of affordable medical care, absence of insurance coverage for medical treatment related to gender identity, and the discrimination and humiliation transgender people face in the medical establishment, many transgender people are only able to obtain hormones through unregulated means, and therefore have no documentation to prove they were prescribed these medications on the outside.

In such cases, despite the presence of physical characteristics evidencing longstanding hormone treatment, as well as prior administrative recognition of medical treatment affirming gender identity by way of legal name changes and adjustments to gender markers on identity documents, transgender inmates are denied medical treatment necessary to maintain their gender identity in prison. Even in instances where an individual is approved for such treatment, it is often provided sporadically, inconsistently, at inappropriate doses, and without accompanying psychological support, thereby endangering transgender inmates’ health and wellbeing. The denial of access to hormone treatment has profound effects, including extreme mental distress and anguish, often leading to an increased likelihood of suicide attempt, as well as depression, heart problems, and irregular blood pressure.

Linda Patricia Thompson's experiences exemplify the trauma many transgender women experience while incarcerated. Prior to her incarceration, Thompson had been living as a woman for a number of years and had legally changed her name. However, she could not afford gender reassignment surgery or medically approved hormone treatment, which would have required approval by two physicians and one psychiatrist to obtain a prescription. She did, however, obtain hormones by other means, and had been taking them continuously for a significant period of time. Once incarcerated, Thompson was housed in a male facility and denied access to hormone treatment. In the throes of the profound depression and psychological distress that ensued, she took matters into her own hands. On two separate occasions she attempted to amputate her own genitalia, "nearly bleeding to death in the process." According to her attorney, Bruce Bistline, "That sort of self-mutilation is not extraordinary in the transgender prison population. The level of desperation is just that high." The Harry Benjamin Standards of Care for treatment of GID confirm that the rapid withdrawal of hormone therapy can lead to the severe psychiatric symptoms and self-injurious behavior exemplified in Thompson’s case. It can also have less catastrophic, but nevertheless distressing physical side effects, leaving incarcerated transgender people “trapped in a netherworld between manhood and womanhood.”Additionally, lack of access to medical treatment unrelated to maintenance of gender identity can have profound effects on transgender prisoners. For instance, transgender women who are incarcerated are disproportionately low-income women of color who also suffer increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, sickle cell anemia, and undetected breast cancer due to limited or nonexistent access to medical care on the outside. Transgender people also suffer from long-term health effects of hormone therapy, including an increased risk of cancer, liver damage, depression, hypertension, and diabetes, which are only complicated by irregular or interrupted access to hormone treatment while inside prisons. As a result, without proper medical treatment, transgender inmates face severe detrimental health consequences. Unfortunately, neglect and intentional denial of medically necessary treatment to transgender people is but one aspect of the medically mediated punishment of sexual and gender nonconformity.

Another is the treatment of prisoners with HIV/AIDS, a health condition inextricably associated with queerness in the public imagination. The turbulent mix of fear, rage, and hysteria characterizing the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis has been magnified inside the controlled and retributive world of penal institutions. As a result, what Kunzel calls “indentifying practices” mark all HIV-positive prisoners- both queer and heterosexual- as criminally different, dangerous, and diseased.

At Limestone Correctional Facility in Alabama, the loathing associated with the archetype of the disease spreader embodied in HIV-positive prisoners was distilled into a physical structure—a drafty, leaky warehouse that served as a segregated unit for male prisoners with HIV/AIDS. The prisoners sequestered in this crowded, vermin-infested unit—many of whom were poor and suffered from multiple chronic health conditions—lived, ate and slept in a situation so wretched that is was characterized as “lethal abandonment.”

After a series of staphylococcus infections broke out, the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) filed a class action suit on behalf of the HIV-positive prisoners housed at Limestone against the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) and the private company it contracted with for prison health services. Dr. Stephen Tabet, an infectious disease specialist, reviewed the medical treatment prisoners had received, and concluded that almost all of the forty-three HIV/AIDS-related deaths at Limestone between 1999 and 2003 were “preceded by a failure to provide proper medical care or treatment," and that most patients died of preventable illnesses. Many who died were malnourished, suffered from "wasting syndrome,” a preventable, AIDS-related involuntary, significant weight loss, chronic diarrhea, or weakness and fever. He also found that coinfections, such as tuberculosis and hepatitis B and C, and opportunistic infections such as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, were often simply not diagnosed, or if they were, not appropriately treated. Tabet took particular note of the disproportionate suffering of prisoners with physical disabilities in a setting so hostile to their needs that they had no access to appropriate bathing facilities. Despite litigation efforts until 2006 and the ADOC’s termination of its contract with one private medical care provider, the treatment provided to HIV-positive prisoners at Limestone—while improved as a result of legal action—continued to be problematic.

Likewise, Dormitory E in Alabama's Julia Tutwiler prison for women served as a segregated for HlV-positive women, where prisoners were subjected not only to involuntary disclosure of their HIV status, but also prohibited from working any jobs or attending any educational and rehabilitative programs, as well as many religious and recreational activities. Years of litigation and organizing efforts by the ACLU and others were necessary before the ADOC abandoned rules prohibiting HIV-positive prisoners’ participation in work-release programs in 2009, but some aspects of segregation of HIV-positive prisoners remain.

While Limestone's segregated unit may have been uniquely Dickensian, and Alabama insisted on segregating prisoners with HIV/AIDS long after many states abandoned the model, the dehumanizing treatment of HIV-positive prisoners remains widespread. Also, according to Mary Sylla, founder and director of policy and advocacy for the Center for Health Justice, "HIV treatment in most U.S. prisons and jails lags behind treatment provided in the broader community."

Some jurisdictions require mandatory HIV testing for prisoners, others do not. The Centers for Disease Control and public health advocacy organizations argue that people who are incarcerated should be able to “opt out” of institutional testing programs, begging the question of whether it is truly possible for people whose entire lives are under the control of penal authorities to freely consent to or decline testing without fear of negative consequences. Moreover, anonymous testing, considered a best practice on the outside, is not available inside prisons. Violation of a medical confidentiality for prisoners who are tested is commonplace. Waheedah Shabazz-El learned she was HIV-positive during a routine examination while incarcerated in Philadelphia’s Cambria Correctional Center. “The tester blurted out that I was HIV positive in a busy hall area.. Everyone walking by could see me. I sobbed and wanted to kill myself.”

Once prisoners are diagnosed as HIV-positive their medical care is often erratic and inadequate. For example, the timely and regular provision of HIV combination therapy, commonly known as the cocktail, in which three or more anti-HIV drugs are administered in a specific regimen, is essential to many prisoners with HIV. Failure to administer the medications properly not only impedes the efficacy of treatment but also can create resistance to the drugs being used. Some prisons do not maintain adequate supplies of HIV medications and run out for weeks at a time. In other circumstances, prisoners with HIV/AIDS fail to receive their daily drug regimen due to transfers within the prison system, attendance at court dates, or, ironically, visits to a medical clinic. As Waheeda Shabazz-El reports, “On numerous occasions, I received my medications late.”

Antonio O., a thirty-three-year-old, openly gay, HIV-positive man from El Salvador and a lawful permanent resident of the United States was transferred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) San Pedro Service Processing Center (SPSC) in California after an arrest on a minor drug offense. In 2007, he told HRW that throughout his incarceration he had great difficulty staying on his medication regimen: jailers tried to reduce the number of medications he was taking, and then, upon arrival at SPSC, officials confiscated his medications for several days. “[The guards] look at us as if we’re inferior, not only because we’re gay but because we’re immigrants,” he said. “To them, we’re nothing but maggots from another country that need to be swept out.” That same year, Victoria Arellano, a transgender woman detained in SPSC’s facility for men, died shackled to her bed after being denied appropriate HIV/AIDS medication and treatment, despite, “increasingly desperate requests for urgent medical attention made by Arellano and [her] fellow detainees as [her] conditions deteriorated in the weeks prior to [her] death.” An investigator from HRW, arriving in the wake of Arellano’s death, learned that less than twenty-four hours prior to the visit, more than twenty detainees who witnessed the events leading up to Arellano’s death were transferred out of the Los Angeles area. According to one survey, 38 percent of correctional medical-care providers reported that an HIV specialist is never available to prisoners. An emphasis on cost cutting usually means significantly lower pay for medical staff in prisons and jails, making it difficult to recruit and retain highly qualified staff. In another cost-cutting move, more than half the states are expanding their use of “telemedicine,” or videoconferencing, for physician consultations with prisoners, further reducing the quality of care. Judy Greenspan, of the HIV-Hep C in Prison Committee of California Prison Focus notes bluntly that “there’s a lot lost in the translation” when a physician peers at the prisoner through a video screen, trying to determine what tests to order based on a digital image and computer records.

As is the case for queers in general, the stigma associated with HIV-positive status in prison extends beyond punitive segregated housing conditions and denial of appropriate medical care to being subjected to heightened surveillance and punishment. For instance, Joseph Bick, chief medical officer and director of HIV treatment services at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, acknowledged that HIV-positive prisoners may be punished more severely for sexual activity or fighting, and may be denied access to work and educational opportunities that could lead to reduced sentences.

Despite the lack of any political power and control over their existence, prisoners, including many who are LGBT, creatively resist the daily onslaught of violence and repressing they endure, acting alone or collectively, in open or secretive ways. Still, the violence and degradation that are integral to prisoners’ live experiences demand that we ask ourselves what can be done to prevent the myriad human rights violations perpetrated on millions of people warehoused in U.S. penal institutions.

Over the past two centuries, reformers, advocates, and activists have waged campaigns to reform prisons—a cause mainstream LGBT groups have largely ignored. Nonetheless, a growing number of progressive queer groups, including SRLP, TGJIP, the Transformative Justice Law Project (TJLP), and Project UNSHACKLE, place the lives and needs of prisoners who are queer in the center of their vision. Working with other advocacy and human rights organizations, they seek to force penal officials to respond to their needs, most recently joining with others in issuing a Call for Change to address sexual violence suffered by queers in prison.

While these ongoing efforts may produce changes for individual prisoners of facilities, systemic and transformative change has proven elusive. The violence and punishment visited on LGBT prisoners “are not anomalies,” and they cannot be eradicated through reform. They are deeply embedded in the fabric of the prison system, and perpetuated through queer criminalizing archetypes. Not only have prisons failed to deter crime and produce safety, they are sites where the safety, dignity, and integrity of all prisoners, including LGBT prisoners, are eviscerated, begging the question of whether freedom from violence for LGBT people—indeed for any community—can be purchased by the continued institutionalization of such inhumanity and brutality.

Notes

An additional excerpt, from the chapter titled "The Ghosts of Stonewall: Policing Gender, Policing Sex," can be accessed here.





Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance makes visible women's experiences in the criminal justice system. Documenting these stories is integral to this project of resistance. The stories are supported by a collection of resources, such as organizations, reports, essays, and links to a wide range of information on women and prison. The contents of this website are fluid and constantly changing. We expect to add stories, articles and resources on a regular basis. Your feedback and contributions are welcome.

This site serves as a dedicated space for prisoners, those previously incarcerated, activists, students, academics, and everyone who strives for social justice. Through the use of this website, we hope to promote strategies and actions that challenge the system and the ways that it reproduces all forms of discrimination, violence, and social injustice in the treatment of women and their families.

The invisibility of women's perspectives in discussions of the growing prison industrial complex constitute a serious gap, given that the numbers of women in this system are rising at an alarming rate. Moreover, by making women more visible, we expand the analysis, vision, and strategies being developed to seriously challenge the prison system. The incarceration of women is linked to a multitude of interconnected issues facing poor women, drug-addicted women, women of color, lesbians, and women in prostitution, including interpersonal and state violence, poverty, racism, reproductive rights, homophobia, harassment, lack of quality healthcare, homelessness, and more. Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance aims to make connections among these issues. By drawing attention to the interconnectedness of issues and strategies, we hope to further develop the grounds for coalition and alliance across organizations and movements.
Contact

Beyondmedia Education
4001 N. Ravenswood #204 B
Chicago, IL 60613 USA
tel: 773-857-7300
fax: 773-857-7301
info@womenandprison.org

For online submissions or other inquiries you can also use our contact form.

Prison Abolition and Resisting Gender Violence.

International Women's Day

---Blessings and thanks to our good comrades at Angola 3 News for this---

Resisting Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex --An interview with Vikki Law

by Angola 3 News

Friday, 12 November 2010 11:21

Victoria Law is a longtime prison activist and the author of the 2009 book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press). Law’s essay “Sick of the Abuse: Feminist Responses to Sexual Assault, Battering, and Self Defense,” is featured in the new book, entitled "The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism," edited by Dan Berger.

In this interview, Law discusses her new article, which provides a history of radical feminist resistance to the criminalization of women who have defended themselves from gender violence. Furthermore, Law presents a prison abolitionist critique of how the mainstream women’s movement has embraced the US criminal justice system as a solution for combating violence against women.

Previously interviewed by Angola 3 News about the torture of women in US prisons, Law is now on the road with the Community and Resistance Tour.

Angola 3 News: In your essay “Sick of the Abuse,” you write that “a woman’s right to defend herself (and her children) from assault became a feminist rallying point throughout the 1970s.” You focus on the four separate stories of Yvonne Wanrow, Inez Garcia, Joan Little, and Dessie Woods. All four women were arrested for self-defense and their cases received national attention with the support of the radical women’s movement. Can you briefly explain their cases and why they were so important for the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s?

Victoria Law: Yvonne Wanrow was an American Indian mother of two living in Washington State in the 1970s. In 1972, her 11-year-old son was grabbed from his bike by William Wesler, a known child molester. He escaped and fled to the house of a family friend named Shirley Hooper, whose 7-year-old daughter had been raped by Wesler earlier that year. When Hooper called the police, they refused to arrest Wesler.

Understandably shaken, Hooper called Yvonne Wanrow and asked her to spend the night. Wanrow, who was 5 foot, 4 inches, and had recently broken her leg, brought her gun. At five in the morning, Wesler came to their house. When he refused to leave, Wanrow went to the front door to yell for help. She turned around to find Wesler, who, at 6 foot 2, was towering over her. She shot and killed him.

At her first trial, the judge instructed the jury only to consider what had happened at or immediately before the killing. This omitted (1) Wesler’s record as a sex offender; (2) Wesler’s assault on Hooper’s 7 year old; (3) His attempted assault on Yvonne’s son

Wanrow was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years.

However, various groups and people involved in the women’s movement and the American Indian movement had taken up her cause. They recognized that a woman had the right to defend herself and her family from assault. They held events that raised awareness, educated people, and tied her case into issues of violence against women and the systemic violence against Native people in the US. They also raised funds for her legal defense, which enabled her to have a better defense than she might have been afforded otherwise.

As a result, in 1977, the Washington State Supreme Court granted her a new trial, partially on the basis that the jury should have considered ALL relevant facts when considering self-defense. At her new trial in 1979, Wanrow pled guilty to reduced charges & received a suspended sentence, 5 years’ probation and 1 year of community service. The court decision also established that that women’s lack of access to self-defense training and to the “skills necessary to effectively repel a male assailant without resorting to the use of deadly weapons” made their circumstances different from those of men.

Two years later, in 1974, Inez Garcia shot and killed the man who had blocked her escape from rape. She was arrested and charged with 1st degree (or premeditated) murder. Like Wanrow, her cause was taken up by the women’s movement, which organized teach-ins and fundraisers and galvanized popular support with the recognition that women had the right to defend themselves against rape.

During her first trial, the judge did not allow testimony about the rape as part of the evidence. After her conviction, the women’s movement continued to rally on her behalf and hired feminist attorney Susan Jordan to take over her defense.

Two years later, an appeals court reversed her conviction because the trial judge had instructed the jury not to consider the rape.

During the re-trial, Susan Jordan challenged potential jurors about their preconceptions of rape, making the assault an integral part of the case from the beginning. Garcia was acquitted. The entire jury agreed that the rape and threat of further harm were adequate provocation for Garcia’s action.

That same year, Joan Little, a black woman and the only female prisoner in North Carolina’s Beaufort County Jail, killed Clarence Alligood, a sixty-two-year-old white male guard, after he had entered her cell, threatened her with an ice pick and forced her to perform oral sex. Little was charged with first-degree murder which, in North Carolina, carried a mandatory death sentence.

Again, there was a HUGE outpouring of support from various movements, including people and groups in the women’s liberation and Black Liberation movements as well as more mainstream groups. During her trial, Little’s defense exposed the chronic sexual abuse and harassment endured by women in the jail and prison system. Countering the prosecution’s argument that Little had enticed Alligood into her cell with promises of sex, the defense team called on women who had previously been held at the jail. They testified that Alligood had a history of sexually abusing women in his custody.

Little herself testified about Alligood’s assault.

After seventy-eight minutes of deliberation, a jury acquitted Little, establishing a precedent for killing as a justified self-defense against rape.

Dessie Woods was a Black woman in Georgia who shot and killed a man who tried to rape her and her friend while they were hitchhiking. She was sentenced to 22 years. Black nationalist women took up the case of Dessie Woods, framing it as a case of colonial violence. Radical (White) feminists also took up her cause and used it as a way to challenge white feminists to examine not only sexism and patriarchy but also racism and colonialism.

However, unlike the cases of Little, Wanrow and Garcia, the larger White feminist movement(s) did not rally to her cause.

Even though she did not have the massive outpouring of support as the other three women, the prolonged support that she did have eventually won Woods her freedom in July 1981. A lawyer from the People’s Law Center challenged the use of circumstantial evidence and the use of a special prosecutor (hired by the dead man’s family). The U.S. Court of Appeals determined that there had been insufficient evidence to convict and imprison her.

The first three cases were groundbreaking in that they established legal precedents stating that women had a right to defend themselves (and their children) from sexual assault. In the case of Inez Garcia, her lawyer Susan Jordan extended the legal interpretation of “imminent danger” beyond the immediate time period, thus laying the groundwork for battered women’s defense - that a woman who kills her abuser is acting in self-defense even if she is not under attack at that time.

A3N: What impact did activism have in these four cases?

VL: The activism and organizing around those four cases enabled the women to have better legal defenses than they would have otherwise been afforded. For example, $250,000 was raised for Joan Little’s defense. Almost $39,000 was spent on social scientists who devised an “attitude profile survey:” designed to detect patterns of (racial) prejudice. The defense used their findings to win a change of venue from conservative/racist Beaufort County to Raleigh, which was key in her acquittal. Without the money garnered by supporters, Joan Little, a poor Black woman, would never have been able to have that kind of legal support. Instead, she would have been convicted and executed.

A3N: How are things different today, in 2010?

VL: We don’t see the same outpouring of support for women arrested for self-defense today. We can look at the case of the New Jersey Four, who are four Black lesbians arrested and incarcerated for defending themselves against a homophobic attack on the street. Their case has garnered support from groups working around incarcerated women’s issues and queer issues, but it hasn’t been taken up as widely as, say, the case of Joan Little or even Dessie Woods. Women who are incarcerated for defending themselves against partner violence receive even less public attention and support.

A3N: Shifting our focus to the issue of domestic violence, you write that the early women’s shelters formed by the radical women’s movement in the 1970s “utilized the self-help methods, egalitarian philosophies, and collective structures that had developed within the women’s liberation movement, striving to be democratic alternatives in which women had the space to safely communicate, share experiences, examine the root causes of the violence against them, and begin to articulate a response. However, these efforts received nowhere near the amount of attention, publicity, and support that the women’s movement paid to Wanrow, Garcia, Little, and Woods.”

Why do you think these projects, as well as court cases where women defended themselves from intimates, did not receive the attention they deserved?

VL: Then (and now), people saw battering as a “personal” issue and were reluctant to get involved. Some felt that marriage (or partnership) somehow condoned abuse. Others felt that this was not an issue that a movement could be built on. Perhaps it was also recognized that the issue could divide a movement. After all, when reading histories of revolutionary groups during the 1960s and 1970s, we see that abuse and misogyny often went unaddressed.

A3N: What did these radical activists identify as the “root causes” of violence against women were? What is your personal opinion regarding these root causes?

VL: Radical activists identified society’s misogyny and patriarchy as root causes of violence against women. They pointed out that women are most often the ones who are attacked and abused because they are often the ones with less power (both physically and in terms of resources).

I strongly agree with this analysis and feel that only when we radically transform societal attitudes around gender and power will we be able to have a world without gendered violence.

A3N: The number of battered women’s shelters grew (by 1982, there were an estimated 300-700 shelters nationally), but you write that “the increased interest in the issue by those who did not identify with the women’s liberation movement resulted in a watering down of the radical feminist analyses that led to the first refuges for battered women. These emerging institutions emphasized providing services without analyzing the political context in which abuse occurred. There was a shift from calling for broad social transformation to focusing on individual problems and demanding greater state intervention.”

How do you think this watering down and shift towards greater state intervention has since played out in later decades, leading up to today?

VL: Today, abuse is treated as an individual pathology rather than a broader social issue rooted in centuries of patriarchy and misogyny. Viewing abuse as an individual problem has meant that the solution becomes intervening in and punishing individual abusers without looking at the overall conditions that allow abuse to go unchallenged and also allows the state to begin to co-opt concerns about gendered violence.

For example, 29 states have some form of mandatory arrest policy in a DV call. There is also the possibility of dual arrests (in which both parties are arrested). In addition, many states now have “no-drop prosecution” in which the District Attorney subpoenas the battered spouse to testify with threats of prosecution if she recants or refuses.

The shift towards greater state intervention has also resulted in resources such as battered women’s shelters mirroring some of these same abusive practices (such as isolating the survivor). It also ignores ways in which the state inflicts violence upon women. I would greatly recommend the INCITE! anthology, entitled The Color of Violence, which explores various aspects of violence against women.

A3N: If you were dialoguing with those sectors of today’s anti-violence movement that embrace the criminalization approach, what are the key points you would make in arguing that prisons are not the answer? What do you think is the best way to reduce and prevent violence against women both inside and outside prisons?

VL: The threat of imprisonment does not deter abuse; it simply drives it further underground. Remember that there are many forms of abuse and violence and not all are illegal. It also sets up a false dichotomy in which the survivor has to choose between personal safety and criminalizing/imprisoning a loved one.

Arrest/imprisonment does not reduce, let alone prevent, violence. Building structures and networks to address the lack of options and resources available to women is more effective. Challenging patriarchy and male supremacy is a much more effective solution (although not one that funders and the state want to see).

A3N: Can you please tell us about recent cases of women who are facing charges or have been wrongly convicted for defending themselves?

VL: There’s the case of the New Jersey Four, whom I mentioned above.

There’s also Sara Kruzan, a 31-year-old woman incarcerated at the California Institution for Women. When Sara was 11, she met a 31-year-old man named G.G. who molested her and began grooming her to become a prostitute. By the age 13, she began working as a child prostitute for G.G. and was repeatedly molested by him. At age 16, Sara was convicted of killing him. She was sentenced to prison for the rest of her life despite her background and a finding by the California Youth Authority that she was amendable to treatment offered in the juvenile system.

There’s been a letter-writing campaign to the governor urging clemency. Sara is also up for resentencing and needs letters of support. The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) are working on publicizing and garnering support for her case. However, we’re not seeing a fraction of the support from women’s or other non-prison groups that the cases of Wanrow, Garcia and Little received in the 1970s even though you would think that her story would provoke widespread outrage and calls for release.

I recently received an e-mail from CCWP about Mary Shields, a domestic violence survivor incarcerated for nineteen years on a seven-to-life sentence for attempted murder. This past September, Mary was found suitable for release by the Board of Parole Hearings. In 2006, the Parole Board had also found Mary “suitable for release” but rescinded its decision after Governor Schwarzenegger recommended against release. This time around, the governor has until January (when his term will be up) to either let the Board's decision stand or recommend that it be reversed and so CCWP is calling for people to send letters supporting Mary’s release.

A3N: Anything else to add?

VL: I want to remind readers that if we’re not coming up with solutions to gender violence, then the fall-back becomes relying on prisons and policing to keep women (and other vulnerable people) safe. It is also imperative to support women incarcerated for killing their abusers as well as to support battered women on the outside and to remember that abuse isolates people.

We should be working to end violence against women without strengthening government control over women’s lives or promoting incarceration as a solution to social problems.

Check out all the embedded links here:

http://angola3news.blogspot.com/2010/11/resisting-male-violence-and-prison.html

--Angola 3 News is a new project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is http://www.angola3news.com where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. We are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more.