Nor Meekly Serve Her Time...

Back with you all sometime soon. Enjoy the read.

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Nor Meekly Serve Her Time: Riots and Resistance in Women's Prisons

Victoria Law

New Politics (mayfirst.org) Vol:XII-4

Winter 2010: 48

IN 1974, WOMEN IMPRISONED at New York's maximum-security prison at Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion. Prisoner organizer Carol Crooks had filed a lawsuit challenging the prison's practice of placing women in segregation without a hearing or 24-hour notice of charges. In July, a court had ruled in her favor. In August, guards retaliated by brutally beating Crooks and placing her in segregation without a hearing. The women protested, fighting off guards, taking over several sections of the prison, and holding seven staff members hostage for two and a half hours.

Male state troopers and (male) guards from men's prisons were brought in to suppress the uprising, resulting in twenty-five women being injured. In the aftermath, twenty-four women were transferred to the Matteawan Complex for the Criminally Insane.

Three years earlier, male prisoners in Attica, New York, captured headlines nationwide when they took over the prison for four days demanding better living and working conditions. The governor ordered the National Guard to retake the prison; 54 people (prisoners and guards) were killed. The rebellion catapulted prison issues into public awareness, becoming the symbol of prisoner organizing. In contrast, the August Rebellion is virtually forgotten today, leading to the widespread belief that women prisoners do not organize or resist.

Women prisoners have always resisted. When imprisoned in male penitentiaries and work camps, they refused to obey the rules. When states began housing them in separate facilities, they protested substandard conditions, sometimes violently. In 1835, New York State opened its first prison for women. The environment was so terrible that the women rioted, attacking and tearing the clothes off the prison matron and physically chasing away other officials with wooden food tubs.[1]

A century later, women continued to protest horrifying prison conditions: In 1975, women imprisoned in North Carolina held a sit-down demonstration demanding better medical care, improved counseling services, and the closing of the prison laundry. When prison guards attempted to end the protest by herding them into the gymnasium and beating them, the women fought back. Using volleyball net poles, chunks of concrete, and hoe handles, they drove the guards out of the prison. Their rebellion was quashed only after the state called in over one hundred guards from other prisons.[2]

Some instances of resistance remain little known outside the prison. Former political prisoner Rita "Bo" Brown recounts that women imprisoned in Nevada took action against the prison's psychiatrist who had been pushing psychotropic medication, even to women who did not need it. One woman died as a result. Her death unleashed the women's anger. The next time the psychiatrist visited the prison, the women threw chairs, tables, and anything they could lift, driving him not only off-premises but also off the job. Not only was the psychiatrist replaced (with the prison's first woman psychiatrist who did not share her predecessor's enthusiasm for drugging patients), but so were the prison's doctor, warden, assistant warden, and other higher-ups in the prison administration.

The women's action did not make the news. Brown learned of it only after arriving at the prison itself two months later. Former political prisoner Laura Whitehorn also recounted tales of resistance that, were she not outside telling them, would have remained buried behind prison walls. When she first arrived at the Baltimore City Jail in 1985, she quickly learned that she would have to fight for her rights, even those she was entitled to under jail regulations, state law, and the constitution. "As a white middle-class woman, I really hate waiting on lines. I didn't want to. But I had to learn the difference between making that an issue, which no one else there thought was the big issue, and fighting for things that were really important to people. And taking leadership from the women who knew better than I did what was important to resist."

She recounted that, like many other jails and prisons, the food was almost inedible. "We had been hoping that at Thanksgiving, we would get a piece of turkey, something that was decent," she recounted. "Come Thanksgiving, they [the guards and administration] hand out these, I don't know, they were dinosaur legs! You could break a window with them. And, in this prison, when you come in and you had dentures, they would take your teeth away. So most of the women didn't have teeth. I couldn't eat them with my big choppers and other women couldn't either. We were all furious. We marched out and we threw them all in the garbage and walked out. That was the first little bit of resistance around this issue.

"So me, with my 'We're going to make a revolution here,' I started talking to my friends. And I said, 'At Christmas, let's do a hunger strike,' or 'Let's throw the trays back at them' or something. And people were like, 'No, we don't want to do that.' And what they came up with, which was much better, was that we should not go to dinner that day. Just not go, and that we should organize the community people that came in, which were a nun, a teacher, a chaplain, and the decent guards to bring food and make a Christmas party. And so we got that. And the whole time I'm thinking 'Oh yeah, this is really revolutionary, a Christmas party.' Well, it was. Because it was saying 'Fuck you. You don't want to give us our rights but we're going to take them in this small way.' It was the most wonderful thing. It was really great."[3]

MORE RECENTLY, WOMEN INCARCERATED in Arizona attempted to protest and draw public attention to the use of cages in Arizona prisons. The only coverage was a short article in the Arizona Republic.[4] The incident might have been forgotten had blogger Peggy Plews not taken on the issue, reprinting the article on her blog, reaching out to other prisoner rights advocates, organizing protest actions, and demanding accountability from Arizona prison and elected officials.[5] Arizona has more than 600 outdoor cages where prisoners are placed to confine or restrict their movement or to hold them while awaiting medical appointments, work, education, or treatment programs.[6] On May 20, 2009, Marcia Powell, a mentally ill 48-year-old incarcerated in Perryville, died after being left in an unshaded cage for nearly four hours in 107 degree heat. Two and a half weeks later, three women at the same prison simultaneously set fire to their mattresses in an attempt to draw outside attention to these conditions.[7]

Women have also resisted in less visibly dramatic ways. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 allows male guards to work in female prisons. Many states do not restrict guards' access to the women, often leading to sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. However, incarcerated women have resisted staff sexual abuse, both individually and collectively. One woman, incarcerated in Ohio during the early 1990s, recounted that a male officer constantly harassed her cellmate. "He'd make nasty insinuations about her breasts and what he would like to do to them and how he would like to do it and what he'd do to her."[8] The guard threatened to place cocaine among their possessions if she or her friends reported his behavior. His threat worked; the women kept quiet about his harassment. One night, he assaulted his victim. Her cellmate and another prisoner heard her screams and found her with semen on her face. Despite their fears, the three filed a complaint with prison officials and later testified before a grand jury, leading to the officer's arrest and conviction. Their actions encouraged other women to resist male guards' abuse of power.

"It was a funny thing after that happened," the woman stated. "A lot of the nastiness and that vulgarness . . . was seeming to cease a little bit and to ease up a little bit, because they began to get nervous. And more women stood up, and two other officers were escorted off because the women found enough courage to stand up."[9]

Laura Whitehorn has a similar story from her incarceration at the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky.
There was this one guard. We called him "John Wayne." . . . He would pat-search us. They're not supposed to put their hands on our breasts or in between our legs, they're supposed to just go around the area. But he grabbed my breasts and squeezed them and so I rammed my elbow into whatever [body part] was nearest behind me. And he tried to lock me up. I was taken to the lieutenant's office.

One of the other dykes on the compound, who was a good friend, saw me. I said, "John Wayne just grabbed my breasts." She brought two others and they all stood outside the lieutenant's office, which is off-limits, and said, "We demand that this be taken seriously." And so they didn't lock me up . . .We then grieved it . . . And we lost. They said he had acted professionally. But the lieutenant . . . took two of us aside and said, "We want you to know that they're making John Wayne watch the training videos over and over again. And they didn't have him at the checkpoint where the most people go through."[10]

Although the women's actions did not remove "John Wayne" from the prison, it did warn him that his behavior would no longer go unchecked and removed him from working in areas where he could do the most harm.

Women have also organized collectively to limit male guards' access and abuse. In 1996, 500 women who had been sexually assaulted by guards while incarcerated in Michigan filed Neal v. MDOC. In July 2009, the suit was settled. Male guards were prohibited from entering areas in which women would be partially or fully undressed (i.e., sleeping, shower, and toilet areas). The settlement also provided for a $100 million settlement for the women who had been assaulted and payment of all legal fees.[11]

Another issue that women have organized around is education. Access to education is particularly important given that women in prison come from the groups least likely to finish high school or attend college: women in poverty, disproportionately African-American and Latina.[12]

In 1973, Michigan was one of several states that provided basic education programs in male but not female prisons.[13] In 1977, women imprisoned in Michigan's Huron Valley State Prison filed Glover v. Johnson, a class-action suit claiming that prison officials violated incarcerated women's rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by denying them access to the vocational and educational programs that were available to their male counterparts. When asked what prompted her to file the suit, lead plaintiff Mary Glover stated, "I wanted to go to college." Both she and her husband had been sentenced to prison. Her husband had the opportunity to enroll in both college and vocational programming. Glover, who was sent to the women's prison, did not.[14]

In 1979, the court ruled in their favor and ordered the state to establish a general education program for women that was the equivalent to the one offered to men.[15]

The court also ordered that the prison offer a course on legal skills to the women "because skilled women inmates are needed to provide access to the courts." In the court's opinion, although the prison law library met constitutional standards, women still lacked the access to the courts guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. Male prisoners had a tradition of jailhouse lawyering and thus had developed expertise in utilizing legal resources, but "the women do not have a history of self-help in the legal field; the evidence tends to show that until recently they have had little access to adequate resources."[16] Some of these women, including Mary Glover, took these courses and then went on to file other suits against MDOC (including Neal v. MDOC).

Women have also organized to defend their access to educational programs. In 1972, radical feminists formed the Santa Cruz Women's Prison Project (SCWPP), the first program to ever offer university courses in a women's prison. In contrast to the prison's existing vocational programs, such as hairdressing, sewing, and office work, the SCWPP offered courses that challenged students to analyze the social issues affecting their lives, such as Women and the Law, Drug Use in U.S. Culture, and an Ethnic Studies course which focused on the historical and sociological perspective on women of color in the United States.[17]

The project also connected women inside with current events and foreign political struggles. After learning about the experiences of women in Vietnam, women at CIW wrote letters of solidarity to women political prisoners in Vietnam. The letters were not only delivered to the women imprisoned in South Vietnam but also published as a pamphlet entitled From Women in Prison Here to Women of Vietnam: We Are Sisters.

In 1972, when one of the SCWPP founders was temporarily banned from the prison and the program suspended, students organized a work strike and a sit-in before the warden's office.[18] When the project was barred again in 1973, the students circulated petitions, held work strikes, and met with the administration to protest the project's removal.

During one of the periods in which the project was banned, a woman who had been at the prison for years observed:

I witnessed something I would have believed [three years ago] was impossible. We had an [illegal] meeting where Black and White were united, under one common cause. There were women there who in the past would never have spoken to each other but here they were standing together, agreeing, touching shoulders. The tone of the meeting was not loud or wild. It was a confident approach to bringing back the workshops. It is something we all want. It was beautiful. We elected a six-woman committee to speak for the group. We are not afraid.[19]

The opportunity to critically examine issues affecting their lives and to challenge prevailing stereotypes built bridges between prisoners who had previously believed they had nothing in common. And, when this opportunity was threatened, these women already had the groundwork to set aside their differences and unite to pressure the prison to reinstate the program.

Even today, access to education has a tremendous impact on women behind bars, many of whom enter prison with low self-esteem, self-worth, and self confidence after years of physical and/or sexual abuse.[20] Marcia Bunney, incarcerated in California, recounted, "Difficult experiences at school during my childhood and adolescence had left me with memories of loathing conventional education and everything connected with it." The abuse that she had suffered in previous relationships had implanted the idea that she was not smart enough to attend college: "I was skeptical of the idea of returning to school, certain that college was beyond my ability, ready to give up before I had given myself a chance to start."[21]

However, without the continual discouragement of abusive lovers and with the encouragement of her fellow prisoners and her prison work supervisor, Bunney overcame her doubts and fears about education, earning an associates degree. That was not her only lesson: "Beyond the specific components of the curriculum, I learned many valuable lessons, the greatest of which was that I was capable. After a lifetime of seeing myself as a failure and as inferior, this represented a complete reversal, one that admittedly required effort to accept and absorb."[22]

How is education linked to resistance? Women with more education are often sought by their peers. Broomhall observed that less literate women rely on others to write their requests to staff members. "They are simply incapable of clear expression," she noted.[23] Dawn, a woman incarcerated in Texas, concurred: "Frequently, I will hear women ask someone to help them write a grievance." She also noted that when a woman writes a grievance about a condition affecting all or most of the women on her unit, others will copy her complaint. "They believe that there is some right or wrong way to fill these [grievance forms] out and that somehow they are not qualified to write on this 'official form,'" she noted. "It's very daunting to some of them."[24]

Education has also led women to challenge systemic abuses: both the writing skills and the self-confidence that Marcia Bunney gained during her college classes led her to learn to use the prison grievance system to dispute prison injustices. Prison officials transferred her to the Central California Women's Facility where she took advantage of her job as a library assistant and taught herself law. She joined the National Lawyers' Guild, becoming one of five prisoner representatives of the National Steering Committee of the Guild's Prison Law Project. She also initiated contact with an attorney known to be interested in litigating to change prison conditions: "Soon I was organizing the active acquisition of information to support claims of systematically inferior medical care, including the names and particulars of prisoners willing to come forward to be interviewed." In addition, Bunney began educating herself about civil litigation, again drawing on the skills she learned through her college classes: "My strong composition skills were an asset, and I grew adept at drafting clear, concise declarations as a means of documenting the serious medical problems of many women, including several who proceeded to file individual actions for damage."[25]

During the 1970s, outside activists and organizers recognized that the injustices occurring on the inside were exaggerated mirrors of those on the outside and often worked in solidarity with people in prison to challenge and change prison conditions. Today, although many on the left are alarmed about the trend of mass incarceration, few are making the personal connections with people inside resisting and organizing. Why aren't we connecting the struggles for social justice outside with those on the inside?

Incarcerated women and their advocates have suggestions on how activists and organizers on the outside can support their resistance behind bars:

• Make contact with women in prison. As a woman incarcerated in Florida put it, "Visits, phone calls, and letter writing are essential. Only with a firm foundation, a strong foundation, can we together be able to build a greater movement."
• Speak out or write about prison issues, especially when they intersect with issues that are considered "non-prison" issues.
• Raise awareness in other creative ways. Activists infuriated by Marcia Powell's death have been placing "Free Marcia Powell" signs in well-trafficked areas, spreading the word not only about her death but also systemic prison atrocities.
• Send literature and news from the outside.
• Participate in support organizations that include the participation and leadership of currently and/or formerly incarcerated women.
• Peer education groups need up-to-date information on health issues and treatments! They also need outside people who are willing to provide services not available (but much needed) within the prison.
• For those connected to universities or other educational institutions: look into setting up a women's studies course or other program within a women's prison that helps articulate and challenge the dominant ways of thinking and the power structure.

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1. Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 17-18.
2. The New York Times, "Women Inmates Battle Guards in North Carolina," June 17, 1975, 18.
3. Laura Whitehorn, "Women on the Margins: Incarceration and Resistance in the Current Era." Left Forum, Pace University, April 19, 2009.
4. Megan Boehnke, "Three Perryville Inmates Set Mattresses on Fire in Goodyear," Arizona Republic, June 7, 2009.
5. In an open letter to the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Charles Ryan, Plews asked: "What has the department done to the women who set their mattresses on fire in organized protest? It is my understanding that they are in administrative segregation now (commonly referred to as being put into the hole), and may only receive legal assistance if charged in criminal court; they are on their own defending themselves in internal disciplinary proceedings, even though the outcome could seriously affect the kind and length of time they end up doing in the long run."
6. Arizona Department of Corrections, Chapter 700: Operational Security. Department Order 704: Inmate Regulations. 704.09: Temporary Holding Enclosures. (accessed July 7, 2009).
7. Peggy Plews, "Smoke Signals in the Desert," Prison Abolitionist, June 7, 2009 (accessed July 7, 2009).
8. Patricia Gagne, Battered Women's Justice: The Movement for Clemency and the Politics of Self-Defense (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998), 185.
9. Gagne, 185.
10. Whitehorn. "Women on the Margins."
11. For more on the settlement, see here.
12. Michelle Fine, Kathy Boudin, Iris Bowen, Judith Clark, Donna Hylton, Migdalia Martinez, "Missy," Rosemarie Roberts, Pamela Smart, Maria Torre and Debora Upegui, Changing Minds: The Impact of College in a Maximum Security Prison, 2001.
13. R.R. Arditi, F. Goldberg, Hartle and Phelps, "The Sexual Segregation of American Prisons," Yale Law Journal 82 (1973): 1242.
14. Mary Glover, telephone interview with author, October 12, 2008.
15. Glover v Johnson, 478 F. Supp. 1075 (E.D.Mich. 1979).
16. Ibid.
17. Karlene Faith, "The Santa Cruz Women's Prison Project, 1972-1976," in Schooling in a "Total Institution": Critical Perspectives on Prison Education, ed. Howard S. Davidson. (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1995), 177-8, 180-181.
18. SCWPP founder Karlene Faith had ended a letter to a prisoner with the word "Venceremos" (literally "we will conquer"), a colloquialism that many activists used to indicate overcoming all obstacles to freedom. However, the guard who read her letter assumed that Faith was connected with a group called "Venceremos," which had claimed credit for an escape from a neighboring men's prison. Faith -- and the program -- was allowed to return to the prison only after a thorough investigation of her background (Faith, "Women's Prison Project,"182-3).
19. Faith, "Women's Prison Project,"185. Faith does not go into detail about what had caused that particular break in the program or what the women had resolved to do in that instance.
20. Caroline Wolf Harlow, Prior Abuse Reported by Inmates and Probationers, special report for the U.S. Department of Justice, April 1999, 1.
21. Marcia Bunney, "One Life in Prison: Perception, Reflection and Empowerment," in Harsh Punishment: International Experiences of Women's Imprisonment, ed. Sandy Cook and Susanne Davies (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999), 24.
22. Ibid., 26.
23. Jerrye Broomhall, letter to author, January 30, 2008.
24. Dawn Reiser, letter to author, February 11, 2008.
25. Bunney, "One Life in Prison," 28-29.

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Author Bio:

Victoria Law is a writer, photographer, and mother. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars -- New York City, an organization that sends free radical literature and books to prisoners nationwide, and editor of the 'zine Tenacious: Writings from Women in Prison. Her latest book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, is the result of 8 years of listening to, writing, and supporting incarcerated women nationwide.
http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/fromthearchives?nid=174

Support Women's Resistance in Prison

UPCOMING EVENTS

December 10: International Human Rights Day

December 15: Fifth Special Legislative Session Begins

December 17: International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers (Tucson Memorial Service).

December 18: SWOP-Tucson Demonstration at the Arizona Department of Corrections, Phoenix.

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The following article is posted at the War Resisters League website, and was authored by Vikki Law, who wrote the books on women's resistance in prison. It seemed especially appropriate for International Human Rights Day. Both the article and the book are a good read...I guess it's bad form but am hoping my friends on the left don't sue me because I'm plugging their whole issue - there's great stuff there about prisons and resistance. Anyway, I'm putting the whole article here so you stay with it, and a second accompanying piece right below. Hit the War Resister's League for the rest of the issue these came out of.

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Women Resist Behind Bars

By Victoria Law
Illustrations by Rachel Galindo

Women have resisted and protested their conditions of confinement since the start of separate female prisons in the 1800s. However, despite the growing body of literature examining female incarceration, little attention has been paid to what women do to change or protest their conditions, thus reinforcing prevailing stereotypes of women as passive victims and the belief that incarcerated women do not organize. Researchers, scholars, and activists continue to focus on the causes, conditions, and effects of women’s incarceration while ignoring the women’s attempts to change or protest these circumstances.

This lack of attention has led to not only an absence of literature but a lack of outside support and resources for and about their issues and actions. Instead of claiming that women in prison do not engage in riots and protest actions that capture media attention, scholars, researchers, and activists should examine why women’s acts of organizing and resistance fail to attract the same public attention and support as those of incarcerated men.

Growing Numbers

The number of women in federal and state prisons has grown twenty fold in the last 40 years, from 5,600 in 1970 to 115,308 by the middle of 2007. What caused this explosion in women’s incarceration?

From President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on crime” in 1965 to Washington State’s “three strikes” legislation in 1993 (which mandates life in prison without the possibility of parole for a third conviction), the policy has increasingly been to blame street crime for the nation’s growing civil unrest.

A preoccupation with drug use contributed greatly as well. President Ronald Reagan’s well-known “war on drugs” expanded both policing and imprisonment. In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act with mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. The act led to a huge expansion in the number of people incarcerated for drug law offenses, from 16,340 in 1986 to 58,260 at the end of 1994.

In addition, the act allowed police and prosecutors to arrest and charge spouses and partners with conspiracy because they took a phone message or signed for a package. Lacking knowledge about drug transactions, spouses and partners are unable to plea-bargain, trading information for a lesser charge. Between 1986 and 1996, the number of women in federal prisons for drug law violations increased 421 percent.

The system affects women of color disproportionately. Bureau of Justice statistics show that 358 of every 100,000 Black women, 152 of every 100,000 Latinas, and 94 of every 100,000 white women are in prison. Racial profiling, not an increase in crime among people of color, accounts for much of this overrepresentation: Policing policies disproportionately target inner-city African-American and Latino neighborhoods. Within the past decade, many police departments have increased the use of stop-and-frisk tactics, in which officers stop, question, and pat down those they perceive as acting suspiciously, often people of color.

Also, alternatives to incarceration are less likely to be offered to people of color: A California study showed that two-thirds of drug treatment slots went to white people despite the fact that 70 percent of people with drug sentences were African-American.

Incarcerated women come from the bottom of the economic ladder: Only 40 percent of all incarcerated women were employed full time before incarceration. Of those, most held low-paying jobs: A study of women under supervision (prison, jail, parole, or probation) found that two-thirds had never held a job that paid more than $6.50 per hour. Approximately 30 percent had been receiving public assistance before being arrested. The 1996 welfare reform disqualified those with drug felonies and probation or parole violations. Between 1996 and 1999, more than 96,000 women were subject to the welfare ban because of past drug convictions.

HIV Organizing in Prison

The majority of women enter prison after years of poverty, poor nutrition, substance abuse, and a lack of access to health care. In addition, these women have fewer resources and options for survival than women in higher economic brackets and are often forced to engage in riskier activity, making them more susceptible to diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C. Women in prison are more likely to be HIV-positive than either men in prison or women on the outside. However, prisons have been slow, at best, to respond to the needs of prisoners with HIV and AIDS. Prison conditions exacerbate existing health conditions, and the inadequate medical care can be life threatening for those with serious health problems.

In 1987, women at New York’s Bedford Hills Correctional Facility began the AIDS Counseling and Education program (ACE), a peer education program that cares for women who have HIV/AIDS and combats the fear, ignorance, and stigma around the disease. At the time, prisoners circulated petitions demanding that women who were perceived to have HIV be removed from their housing units. They also ostracized them socially, refusing to share meals or have physical contact with them. Staff members, including medical staff, also knew little about the disease and were afraid to have physical contact with their patients. In one horrifying instance, a woman died alone in the intensive care unit because no nurse or guard was willing to attend to her.

ACE members helped women prepare for their medical exams, working with them to define and articulate their questions. In some instances, they also accompanied women to their medical consultations. In addition, ACE battled stereotypes and fears around the disease. They presented educational seminars, often using role-playing to break through barriers, generate discussion, and examine the issues.

ACE continues today, and its model is spreading to other prisons. In 1991, women at the federal prison in Pleasanton, Calif., started the Pleasanton AIDS Counseling and Education (PLACE) program. When the program started, the prison had no pre- or post-testing counseling, no mention of AIDS at orientation for new prisoners, no special diets or vitamins for HIV-positive prisoners, and no treatments besides AZT, an antiretroviral drug that, when administered alone, enabled HIV to develop a resistance to the drug so that it only inhibited the virus for a short time. In addition, AZT was often administered in overly high doses, causing life-threatening side effects.

PLACE members began by educating themselves about the disease and presenting their newfound knowledge to others. The process not only increased awareness about the disease but also combated the sense of powerlessness and the infantilizing manner that incarcerated women face on a daily basis. “The small steps of learning new information and presenting it to a group, or of figuring out goals and a program of AIDS education for our sister prisoners, are really giant steps in the process of empowerment, commitment, and enhancing our self-esteem,” recounted founder Linda Evans.

Even prison administrators are recognizing the value of peer education programs. Oklahoma’s Mabel Bassett Correctional Center instituted an HIV peer education program. In 2007, peer educator Jerrye Broomhall reported, “The level of ignorance is shocking. Stuff like, ‘I don’t want to wash my clothes after her; what if her panties were bloody?’ People don’t want to share cells, meals, so most women just keep their status a secret.” Two years later, Broomhall reported, “I have seen less ignorance. I have heard people refer to what they have learned in class. Women have said they will teach their children, friends, and family things they have learned in class.”

Abuse and Battering

More than half the women in state prisons and local jails report having been physically and/or sexually abused in the past. The Bureau of Justice found that women were three times more likely than men to have been physically or sexually abused prior to incarceration. The prison environment, with its male guards, lack of privacy, physical and verbal abuse, and fear, often perpetuates the abuse. Despite these circumstances, women have connected with and supported each other in their efforts to overcome past trauma.

In the late 1980s, women serving life sentences in Marysville, Ohio, formed a support group called Looking Inward for Excellence (LIFE). Members realized that many had been sentenced to life imprisonment for killing their abusers. At a time when abuse and battering were still not widely recognized in either the courtrooms or outside society, they began working around issues of domestic violence.

LIFE members reached out to other survivors, helping them overcome denial and encouraging them to apply for clemency. Their actions challenged the way prisons normally divide—and breed mistrust among—the people inside: “When you’re in the institution, you get to be kind of secret,” recalled one LIFE member. “But as we started to get information, we would put packets of stuff together, illegally Xerox stuff, and kind of under the cover [say], ‘Read this, you know, this is good reading.’” Their efforts led to 18 additional women applying for clemency.

In the end, 25 women were granted clemency.

The actions of LIFE inspired women at the California Institution for Women to organize a clemency drive. Members of Convicted Women Against Abuse (CWAA), a prisoner-initiated support group for battered women, wrote a letter to then-Governor Pete Wilson asking him to consider commuting their sentences and inviting him to one of their weekly meetings so that he could understand how they had ended up in prison. Wilson declined the invitation, but their letter drew the attention of lawyers and advocates who helped the women draft arguments and gather evidence for clemency petitions.

Wilson granted clemency to three, denied it to seven, and made no decision on 24 of the petitions.
CWAA members continue to meet and share current news regarding domestic violence, homicide cases, court rulings, and their own experiences with the justice system. They also discuss possible legal strategies, media stories about women who fight back, and journalists with a focus on domestic violence.

In both Ohio and California, battered women’s efforts not only strengthened and expanded the clemency processes but also raised public awareness about abuse. Even those who were not granted clemency became empowered to speak out about their experiences instead of continuing to live in shame. The advocates and lawyers who originally helped women with their petitions formed the California Coalition for Battered Women in Prison to continue organizing and educating the public. More than 15 years later, the group, now called Free Battered Women, continues to advocate the release of women imprisoned for self-defense, and its work has helped free 35 women within the past 12 years.

The Need for Outside Support

In the 1970s, off our backs and other radical feminist publications not only reported on the struggles of incarcerated women but connected their fights with those on the outside, urging readers to get involved.
Radical feminists formed support groups for imprisoned women and organized campaigns around their issues. In one instance, they managed to generate enough public and political pressure to shut down the Alternative Program Unit (a closed-custody behavior modification unit for women who were deemed “disruptive”—a label that included lesbians, leaders, or the disobedient) at the California Institute for Women.

Today, Arizona prisons have more than 600 cages where prisoners are placed to restrict their movement or while they await medical appointments or work, education, or treatment programs. Although prison policy prohibits using the cages as punishment, lesbians, targeted solely for their sexual orientation, are often placed in these cages, sometimes for hours at a time in over 100-degree weather.

Lesbians are not the only prisoners to suffer in these cages. On May 20, 2009, Marcia Powell, a mentally ill 48-year-old incarcerated in Perryville, died after being left in an unshaded cage for nearly four hours in 107-degree heat. Two-and-a-half weeks later, three women at the same prison simultaneously set fire to their mattresses in an attempt to draw outside attention. However, the lack of connections with outside supporters meant that little attention was paid to their action and they quietly disappeared.

Feminist and other activist groups of the 1970s recognized the importance of reaching out to and including prisoners in the dialogue around social justice. Now, when the prison population is more than 2 million, why aren’t we recognizing how our struggles intersect?

As Rachel Galindo, a woman incarcerated in Colorado, put it:

I was thinking about how we prisoners are very cut off from much of the rest of the world, including people who do not support the prison system or people who may be interested in our struggle. So I think that more communication via letters would help. … The communication between two humans concerning their hopes, ideas, and their plights is what allows them to bond in resistance against a system that affects everyone in many different ways. We prisoners would be inspired to see another position of struggle and that, though they may differ, all struggles are shared. This would strengthen resistance both inside and outside of the prison gates.

Victoria Law is a writer, photographer, and mother. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars–New York City, an organization that sends free radical literature and books to prisoners nationwide, and editor of the zine Tenacious: Writings from Women in Prison. She is also the author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press, 2009). Rachel Galindo’s artwork and writings about life at the women’s prison in Pueblo, Colo., have appeared in Tenacious and Resistance Behind Bars. Her art has also appeared in the Canadian zine Kiss Machine and will be on the cover of the upcoming Mamaphiles: A Mama Zine Collaboration.

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Six Ways for People on the Outside to Support Women’s Resistance on the Inside

(Suggestions from women incarcerated throughout the country)

•  Make contact with women in prison. “Visits, phone calls, and letter writing are essential. Only with a firm foundation, a strong foundation, can we together be able to build a greater movement,” says a woman incarcerated in Florida.
•  Speak out about these issues, especially when they intersect with issues that are considered “non-prison” issues.
•  Send literature and news from the outside.
•  Write articles about women prisoners’ issues, experiences, and actions, or publish their articles.
•  Peer education groups need up-to-date information on health issues and treatments! They need outside people who are willing to provide services not available (but much needed) within the prison.
•  If you are connected to a university or other educational institution, look into setting up a women’s studies course or other program within a women’s prison that helps articulate and challenge the dominant ways of thinking and the power structure.