THE FEMINIZATION OF PRISON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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