'WOMEN BEHIND BARS' IS A SHOCKING NEW BOOK

Silja J.A. Talvi of Seattle is a 21st-century muckraker. The
37-year-old native of Finland is an independent investigative reporter
with an intense dedication to exposing societal wrongs in hopes of
affecting change.

Some of her work is published by "In These Times," a progressive monthly
on the East Coast where she is a senior editor. But two years of travel,
research and writing have just produced Talvi's first book -- "Women
Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System" (Seal Press,
295 pages, $15.95). This comprehensive and passionately argued
indictment of the inhumane treatment of female prisoners is the sort of
shocking expose too seldom seen in these media days of so much celebrity
fluff.

Talvi will discuss her book at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Langston Hughes
Performing Arts Center, a free event hosted by Powerful Voices, a
Seattle non-profit with programs to aid at-risk adolescents.

P-I: What interested you in women in prison in the first
place?

Talvi: I had looked at women in prison previously and that experience
got me to see that it was a more serious issue than I thought. But the
incident that inspired the book was my 2000 visit to the segregated
housing unit at the world's largest women's prison in Chowchilla, Calif.
I thought I had prepared for that visit, watching documentaries about
super maximum security prisons. But being led into this concrete
facility that looked so foreboding, I was soon surrounded by the screams
of these prisoners -- moans and wails echoing off the concrete walls.
And in the middle of the ground floor there was a small cage that
contained a woman who was being admitted for processing ...

It was disturbing to see women in what is a barbaric insane asylum, a
place so invisible to the public and tax money doing this.

What convinced you to do a book on this subject? And how long did you
think it would take?

Most of the treatments of the issue of women in prison have been
academic. Most are focused on one woman and most journalism uses that
approach too. I decided I could do a lot more. ...

The book was supposed to be done within a year, but it took two years.
The travel required was a real issue for me; my publisher wouldn't
fund that. I visited women's prisons around the U.S., plus three
international ones, and each trip required me to raise money by
writing articles or using my own money. By the end of the book, I had
little money at all. But what I had done with the book was different
from what existed before.

What was the most surprising thing you discovered?

I did not expect to see the commonality in the threads of these
prisoners' lives. Nearly every woman I interviewed (around 100) had a
serious history of trauma or abuse in her life, emotional abuse or
sexual abuse or domestic violence. Many had been raped. More than a
third of the women entering the prison system were homeless, while 70
percent had moderate or severe mental illness.

I also didn't expect the women to be as tremendously resilient as they
are. I expected to hear "Help me!" or "I can't take it anymore!" or
"I'm going to kill myself!" They didn't do that. ... Instead, they
often said, "This isn't just about me" ... they have a real sense of
responsibility for each other.

You document the shocking rise in the number of incarcerated women in
the U.S. (up 775 percent since 1977, double the rate of male
prisoners). What is the No. 1 cause of that increase?

Hands down, the acceleration of the drug war. ... We are getting these
increased numbers in prison but these are not high-level traffickers,
even the most conservative legislator will agree. ... There's also the
fact that women are less likely than men to snitch on loved ones.
Prosecutors will come to them and say they will go to prison unless
they give up the names of three higher-ups, but women usually either
say they don't know those people or will simply decline. Men will
snitch and, unfortunately, they often get less time in prison than
women who don't.

Why should people who are not behind bars care about women in
prison?

Here's the thing -- prisoners are us, members of our society. Yet
we've done something in this country to think of prisoners as being so
deviant, so disgusting, as if their sentence is part of a lifelong
punishment with a kind of scarlet letter stigma.

Since ex-convicts ... have to check that criminal record box on
employment forms, since they are not given public housing, these
people will fall into an even lower class and will commit more crimes,
sometimes more serious crimes. We are guaranteeing a more unstable
society.

You did all this research on a little-covered area of society, then
your book is published in a paperback edition by a small press -- is
that disappointing?

No, on the contrary, this book is a paperback so those in prison and
their families and friends can afford it. Affordability was important
to me. I was not targeting academic or high-brow readers. I walk
around and talk about these issues and want more people to discuss
them.

What's the relationship of Powerful Voices to your
project?

Powerful Voices is just up the street from where I live in the Central
District. They go into juvenile halls and work with these girls. In a
short space of time, maybe three to five minutes, they get those
girls, usually in shutdown or blotto mode, to open up about deep stuff
in their lives.

A lot of these girls are pregnant or have been sexually abused. The
people at Powerful Voices are incredibly effective, offering honest
information about HIV, about pimps. They do this work with high-risk,
low-income girls from middle school and work around empowerment, too.

They brought me into juvenile hall here, getting me different access.
I was a volunteer, leading writing workshops for the girls. I also got
permission to record their stories, without using their full names.
Some of these stories were more disturbing than I ever imagined.

How has what you learned about women in prison changed your own
behavior outside of prison?

Holy cow. I think the thing that struck me the most, although it
sounds corny, is waking up in my own bed and having the right to get
up and eat when I wanted to and the right to go outside and go for a
walk. There is no one to give me an order about any of those things. I
began to feel tremendously grateful for things I once took for
granted. The ability to move around without regulation and control
felt like an absolute luxury. Some mornings, I would wake up feeling
guilty about that, thinking of the women in their beds in prison. I
often wonder if I could last a few days in there. I have immense
gratitude for the fact that I am a free woman.