Three local women spoke about \u201cThe Unique Story of Women in Prison.” The first speaker reported on her research, and the other two spoke about their personal experiences while imprisoned for protesting injustices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our\nfirst speaker was Paula Johnson<\/strong>, a\nprofessor of law at Syracuse University College of Law. She currently serves as\nco-president of the Society of American Law Teachers, and she has written and\nspoken extensively on matters of race, gender and law. Her writings include the\nrecently published book Inner Lives: Voices of African-American Women in\nPrison <\/em>(NYU Press, 2003). <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nrecipient of numerous awards, Paula shared with us her research and her\npersonal experiences with African-American women in prison. Paula began by\nsaying that there has been insignificant attention to women in prison and to\nthe impact that the experience of imprisonment has on their lives. She also\nasked how we got to this place of so many prisons. The United States presently\nincarcerates or has on parole over 7\u00bd million people. In fact, the United\nStates has surpassed all the other nations of the world in the percent of its\npopulace that it incarcerates. While there are more men than women in U.S.\nprisons, the female population is growing more rapidly. She stated that over\n100,000 women are imprisoned in state and local jails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Paula\nasked us to consider who some of these women are and explained that many of\nthem \u201cmirror\u201d us. It was their particular challenges that led many to prison,\nwhether abuse done to them, substance abuse, or ensnarement in drug trafficking\nof their partners. None of them dreamed or aspired to be in prison. In addition,\nPaula told us that women often serve longer sentences than their male\ncounterparts because men often receive better deals since they can provide more\ninformation such as naming others who are involved. Usually women are sentenced\nfor nonviolent offenses, often simply doing things just to survive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She\nthen spoke of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which was enacted into law last\nweek, addressing the discrimination of women\u2019s pay in the working environment. However,\nin the prison environment, many women suffer discrimination, and this disparity\nis greatest in the African-American population. This disparity is evident in\nthe charges, treatment, punishments, worse assignments, and lack of educational\nopportunities for these women. To illustrate, <\/p>\n\n\n\n Paula told us the story to Joyce Ann Rounds who was accused of armed robbery that also involved a homicide. Joyce spent ten years in a Texas prison for a crime she didn\u2019t commit. Many people reported seeing her at the time of the crime, far from the scene. However, no one bothered to investigate, and the state insisted she committed the crime and the jury convicted her. For another example, Paula read an excerpt from her book about another woman who was sentenced to 45 years for a simple unarmed robbery to feed her children at Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paula\nended by asking, \u201cWhat are prisons for?\u201d Prisons cannot just be focused on\npunishment but instead should concentrate on prevention. Many people need\nhealth care, mental health care, housing, child care, etc., and Paula suggested\nthat if our society addressed these issues, many people would not be incarcerated.\nShe ended by saying, \u201cEverybody can\u2019t do everything, but everybody can do\nsomething.\u201d We can contribute money to help transport children to visit their\nmothers or to transport the women to their parole sites or other services\nmandated by the prison system. We can also donate books, as literacy is\nextremely important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our\nsecond speaker, Julienne Oldfield<\/strong>,\nis an active member of Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church and Peace Action. A\ncommitted Christian, Julienne is concerned with issues of peace and justice. She\nprotested to close the School of the Americas in Georgia and, in November 2006,\nwas arrested at the military base at Fort Benning, Georgia. Julienne was sentenced\nto 90 days in the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center and began her sentence\non April 17, 2007. Julienne tried to reassure her husband, who was worried\nabout her imprisonment, by hiding the fact she herself was scared. She was incarcerated\nwith another companion from the Fort Benning protest, first on the special\nhousing unit (SHU) reserved for outright offenders. There they, for ten days,\nhad no contact with other inmates except for the nightly awakening of voices in\nthe dark. There she spent her 70th<\/sup> birthday; Julienne read us a poem\nshe wrote for that day. It ended with: <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the small of the night After\ntwo weeks they were moved down to the third floor, as \u201cwe were no longer\nconsidered a threat to the system.\u201d This floor was light and clean with 52\nunits of cells, each occupied by two individuals. The women did all the work\nthroughout the jail, which housed one more identical unit for women in addition\nto units for 1000 men. She was assigned to work in the kitchen for 12\ncents\/hour. She told us that afterwards it took three months for her\nfingernails to get back to normal because of the harsh sanitation fluid they\nhad to use. She did link this to the fact that no one suffered the common cold\nwhile she was there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Julienne\ntold us that the other inmates\u2019 first reaction to her was, \u201cWhat\u2019s she doing\nhere?\u201d By color, accent, age, by not taking medications, by being married to\nthe same husband for forty-five years, receiving heaps of mail from supporters\nand knowing exactly where she stood in relation to the length of her stay, she\nrealized she was different. However, she shared with her fellow inmates a\nbelief in fair play and honesty, concern for each other, and a desire to be treated\nwith respect. Julienne said her jail experience gave her access to an amazing\ngroup of women, mostly African-Americans, a few with whom she shared Bible\nstudy. They all endured the waiting and the fact that they had to do whatever\nwas ordered by the officers known as \u201ccops.\u201d No vibes! No objections! Just do\nit! The alternative was being relegated to the isolation of the SHU, losing the\nright to have visitors or phone calls, except for a single call each week. The\nprison industrial complex is rooted in gaining profits, regardless of the fact\nthat it breaks up family units, deprives so many children of their mothers, and\nkeeps so many in limbo with their lives on hold. Julienne noted that throughout\nthis country\u2019s jails, the commissary turnover amounts to a billion dollars a\nyear, as prisoners have to depend on the limited supplies available to them. However,\nshe ended by saying she was grateful for this unique experience, a humbling,\ntransforming one, thanks to the women she met during her three-month stay in\nthe Federal Incarceration System. The support from fellow members of WTB,\nPebble Hill Presbyterian Church, the Syracuse community, and members of the\nSchool of the Americas Watch was immeasurable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kathleen Rumpf<\/strong>, our final speaker, has been arrested more than 100 times. Her activism began in 1971 working with the Catholic Worker movement helping to serve homeless women and children in Baltimore and New York City. She has been sentenced to jails and prisons for protesting war and on behalf of the homeless. Ten years ago Kathleen served one year in prison for protesting torture at the School of the Americas. She also lived and worked with the Berrigans and spent two years in prison with Liz McAllister, Phil Berrigan\u2019s wife, after being arrested at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York, for a disarmament witness. She currently lives in Syracuse where she continues to work on behalf of prisoners in federal and state prisons with Jail Ministry and the CNY American Civil Liberties Union. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kathleen told us she has been horrified and haunted by the treatment of prisoners in our jails and prisons. One example she shared was a procedure called the \u201cJesus Christ\u201d where prisoners were hanged naked on the bars of the old jail in downtown Syracuse. Kathleen tried to get this procedure stopped and in 1993 built a cage in front of the jail where she lived for nine days. She stated that some who work in our jails and prisons are good and professional people who understand their mission, but they have no procedure for reporting cruelty or corruption because they would lose their jobs and cannot risk speaking out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kathleen\nlobbied in Washington, DC, for better conditions in our prisons. In ten months\nshe saw fourteen women die in prison, many of whom did not belong there; while\nat Congress, the head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons testified under oath to\nCongress that three out of four women do not belong in prison. She repeated\nPaula\u2019s remarks that very few women in federal prisons have information to\noffer to the authorities in return for a reduction in sentencing, and thus they\nserve longer sentences than men. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One\ncase she shared with us involved a 78-year-old grandmother, Savannah Means, who\nwas arrested in Birmingham, Georgia, for not testifying against her\ngrandchildren. In all, sixteen grandmothers were incarcerated for this \u201ccrime\u201d\nand received sentences of 8 to12 years. The Carswell Prison in Texas at Fort\nWorth is the only prison in the Federal Bureau of Prisons that houses women who\nare sick or have mental health issues. She saw many women die because <\/p>\n\n\n\n they\nwere not treated for their illnesses and often went undiagnosed; many\nincarcerated women had untreated last-stage cancer at the time they arrived in\nCarswell. While these women didn\u2019t get death sentences, this lack of medical\ncare did, in a sense, impose a death sentence on many of them. Kathleen showed\nus some very disturbing pictures. One was of a woman with untreated sores on\nher leg. Upon her release from prison, she needed to be hospitalized and her<\/p>\n\n\n\n leg\nhad to be amputated. In addition, pregnant women in federal prisons are in\nshackles when they deliver their babies; often the infant is taken from the\nmother to be adopted if her family cannot afford to travel to Texas to take the\ninfant or if they are not in a position to adopt the child. In that case, the\nmother loses custody of her child and the baby is put up for adoption. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kathleen\nherself experienced many of the hardships. When incarcerated in Columbus,\nGeorgia, before she was transported to Texas, she lacked basic necessities. She\ngot lice, had no access to hot water, and lacked a toothbrush for more than 30\ndays. Women in prison pay for their own shampoo, any toiletries, paper,\nenvelopes, stamps, phone calls, though earning only 12 cents an hour. In our\nSyracuse jails, the profit can be $35,000 a month from prisoner phone calls. As\nto the increasing number of people being incarcerated, Kathleen said that the\nold downtown Syracuse jail housed 212 inmates; the new jail is now capable of\nhousing more than 700. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kathleen\ncalled our prisons the Prison Industrial Complex and said they are corrupt and\ninept and lack adequate oversight. Taxpayers are victimized as well; the Prison\nIndustrial Complex costs taxpayers more than 60 billion dollars a year, and the\nprisoners when released from prison are left more marginalized, hurting and even\ndangerous because rehabilitation does not exist for the most part. Those\nreleased who lack family or community support are worse for the cruelty and\nwarehousing. Finding work is nearly impossible for many, in part because of\ntheir mental health status and the stigma of being labeled a criminal. \n\nOur meeting ended when vice president Gay\nMontague asked us to join hands in a circle and imagine what \u201cimprisons\u201d each\nof us, preventing us from being our best. We were then asked to let it go.\n\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A law professor reported on her research on women in prison, and two local activists spoke about their personal experiences while imprisoned for protesting injustices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-7503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programs","tag-advocacy",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7503"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8579,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503\/revisions\/8579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The clank of keys, footsteps heavy
Blinding spotlight, focused, flashing
Anguished incessant calling
In 809 we two stand firm, one young, one old
Witnessing within these walls
Our story will in time be told
Three score years and ten
It\u2019s 6 AM in the pen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n