Grievances, Lawsuits and the Power of the Media

Womens struggles to change their conditions often lie in filing grievances and
lawsuits rather than physically challenging or confronting prison officials.
In 1995, women at Central California Womens Facility at Chowchilla and at the
California Institution for Women at Frontera filed Shumate v. Wilson, a
class-action suit against the state demanding an immediate improvement to the
life-threatening medical care given to all women prisoners of the state.1 On
27 March 1996, seven women prisoners in Michigan filed a class-action lawsuit
on behalf of all women incarcerated in Michigan, charging the state's
Department of Corrections with sexual assault, sexual harassment, violations of
privacy, and physical threats and assaults.2 That both suits included women
prisoners throughout their respective states in their charges and demands
dismisses the assumption that there is no sense of solidarity among the
relatively few women prisoners.

Gaining media attention goes hand in hand with filing lawsuits. Barrilee
Bannister and the other 77 women transferred to Florence were removed from the
abusive all-male prison only after their plight caught the medias attention.
Prior to that, those who complained about the guards sexual assaults were
placed in segregation units, had good time taken away and were sometimes
monetarily fined while their attackers suffered no consequences.3 In
Washington, what appears to be "consensual sex" between an inmate and a prison
employee is not explicitly outlawed. Only after Wells' case was made
front-page news did the state's legislators propose banning all prison sex.
However, three years later, no such law has gone into effect.4 In Michigan,
lawmakers began to consider harsher penalties against Corrections Department
workers who have "sexual contact" with an inmate only after prisoner lawsuits
drew embarrassing publicity to the state. The power of the media became
evident when, in 1999, national television journalist Geraldo Riveras report
on official sexual misconduct in prison was cited several times during a House
debate about prison-related legislation.5 But while prison abuse remains
behind closed doors and out of the public eye, policymakers, legislators and
the courts remain reluctant to interfere in the daily operations and conditions
of prisons.

Another example of the power of the media occurred this past year. An
anonymous female prisoner telephoned the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to report
the medical neglect leading to Michelle Greer's death. This one phone call
prompted Sentinel reporter Mary Zahn to begin investigating. Two weeks after
Greer's unnecessary death, she not only publicized the story, but also turned
the death into a "minor sensation." The publicity led the Wisconsin Department
of Corrections to investigate the incident and suspend the two nurses who
initially ignored Greer's requests for medical assistance and then bungled
their eventual response, leaving her to die. The article also prompted the
state's Assembly's Corrections and Courts Committee to hold investigative
hearings into the incident.6

This one story led to the paper's own investigation as to whether the neglect
causing Greer's death was an isolated incident. For the following eight
months, Zahn and a fellow journalist Jessica McBride investigated every
prisoner death since 1994, revealing "a dysfunctional health care system in
which gravely ill prisoners, often while literally begging for medical
treatment, are ignoredand sometimes even disciplined for being 'aggressive' or
'disruptive.'"7 Their findings led to a series of articles about the
inadequate and often times life-threatening medical care in Wisconsin prisons,
prompting the state's lawmakers to introduce legislation requiring
better-trained medical staff, improved medical record-keeping, and the creation
of an independent panel of outside medical experts to review prison deaths.8

Had that one phone call not been made, the deaths of Greer and other
Wisconsin inmates, both male and female, would have remained swept under the
rug. This anonymous woman prisoner protested the conditions of the
prison-industrial complex in a similar way as male inmates like Shearwood and
Fleming, inmate workers who blew the whistle on corporation CMT Bluess
exploitation of prison laborby gaining media exposure to the issue. However,
because she refused to identify herself, her contribution to the struggle
against the prison-industrial complex remains neglected by scholars in favor of
the more vocal and visible forms of resistance.

In California, prison policy bans the media from talking to specific inmates.10
This prevents prisoners from drawing more widespread attention to the abuse and
neglect behind bars, reinforcing the invisibility of prisoners and any
struggles to challenge and change their conditions.

Although prisoners can file grievances against abuse and neglect by the prison
administration, many have become disillusioned and/or fearful of this process.
One woman prisoner interviewed by Human Rights Watch stated that the
corrections officers "will tear it up and throw it in the garbageor [they]
will say, Go ahead and 602 [file an official complaint] me because I know it
wont go nowhere. Most 602s get thrown in the garbage before you go away.
Its a joke to them." In California and many other states, any prisoner filing
a grievance for sexual abuse must first speak to the perpetrator.11 Who knows
how many women have been intimidated into inaction by this outrageous
requirement?

If the inmate does face the perpetrator and if her grievance does not go into
the garbage, she also faces a largely unsympathetic review board that values
the word of a staff member more than that of a prisoner. According to a former
counselor at a Georgia prison, officials expect impunity for their actions
because of the pervading belief that "inmates are criminalstheir credibility
is going to be in question from the very beginning."12 A prisoner also has to
contend with the belief that she does not merit humane treatment simply because
she is incarcerated: When Paula Strothers, a prisoner at a federal prison in
Florida, was escorted naked through her housing unit, she told the (male)
officer, "Fuck you and kiss my ass." For her outburst, she was written a
disciplinary ticket for "Insolence Towards a Staff Member." When she appealed
the ticket, the administration denied that her circumstances justified her
outburst.13 This administrative attitude reflects the larger public
dehumanization of women in prison.

Strothers' treatment is an indication of the hostility towards women
prisoners who complain. As late as 1995, the Michigan Department of
Corrections policy allowed an employee to participate in investigating a
grievance against him or her. The accused employee often made the response to
the complaint as well.14 Although policy changes in 1995 removed the accused
employee's participation in the investigation, the employee is still informed
of the complainant's name and identification number at the outset of the
investigation.15 In Canon City, Colorado, the accused employee is still the
one to address the inmate's formal grievances, making it inevitable that the
grievance will be denied. Dawn Amos observed that during her two years'
incarceration, she has "never, ever seen anyone win a grievance."16 One woman
in Illinois stated that " most women know the grievance process is futile,
unfair, and not complied with so they wont use it. " She, however, files
grievances in order to exhaust the grievance system before moving on to seek
court intervention.17

Those who file lawsuits are also subject to administrative retaliation. An
inmate who participated in a recent class-action lawsuit in Canon City received
two disciplinary tickets and was transferred to a prison in Denver. "That may
not seem harsh to you or others," explains Dawn Amos, "but the women in here
over time find security and stability, with friends, lovers, or their jobs and
the fear of being uprooted and moved to another city really scares them."18
Barrilee Bannister and the other women transferred to Florence are now viewed
as "troublesome prisoners" and have "Security Threat Group" status.19

The most horrifying is the prison's willingness to jeopardize an inmate's
health in retaliation for filing a lawsuit. Because she was the lead plaintiff
in Shumate v. Wilson, Charisse Shumate only received the blood transfusions
necessary for those with sickle-cell anemia once every three months.20 That
such practices are allowed to continue signifies the extent that prison
authorities have kept public scrutiny, and thus outrage, from their walls and
can therefore conduct daily operations as they see fit. Despite the threat of
administrative retaliation, women continue to file grievances and lawsuits. As
one lone woman who files grievances and civil suits in an attempt to improve
her surroundings stated: "If I give up I may as well lay down and die."21

Conclusion

Women prisoners are seen through the same lens as the feminists of the
1960s and 1970s were: both groups are seen as violating the accepted societal
bounds of femininity and are thus subject to dismissal, if not ridicule,
punishment and misrepresentation. Women prisoners are further marginalized and
overlooked by mainstream society because of their relative invisibility and the
pervading assumption of all prisoners as dangerous criminals. While the
feminists of the 1960s and 1970s were able to gain some attention to their
demands through demonstrations and rallies, women prisoners must rely on
sympathetic outside supporters to draw visibility to their issues. With the
current hysteria about crime and punishment, this is no easy task for the
relatively few outside groups with both the desire and the resources to support
women in prison.

However, this does not mean that women in prison passively accept their
conditions. Women inmates have both individually and collectively struggled to
improve their health care, abolish sexual abuse, maintain contact with their
children and further their education. And it seems that more and more women
are finding the courage to demand fair and humane treatment. At the new
womens prison, Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, the administration holds
monthly "town hall" meetings in which it promises that no woman will be
harassed or retaliated against for her complaints. At the first one, Bannister
observed, "I was surprised at how many women have finally found their voices."1
And there are other women whose outrage outweighs their fear. As one woman
wrote, "I anticipate repercussions for speaking outbut I have to speak. The
abused are silent and the abuse goes on!" Such actions are often ignored or
dismissed by those studying the prison-industrial complex, prisoner rights
activists and outside feminists, making documentation and research all the more
important in giving women inmates a voice in the discourse.

NOTES:

Grievances, Lawsuits and the Power of the Media

1 "Defend the Lives of Women in Prison." Prison News Service, #51. May/June
1995. 2.

2 Human Rights Watch. 232. As of 1999, the suit was still unresolved.
However, the Michigan legislature approved legislation that year that would
remove all of its prisoners from the states civil rights and disabilities
laws. The legislation would apply retroactively, thus eliminating the lawsuit,
brought under the Civil Rights Act. See "Attacking Prisoners Rights." The
New York Times. 21 December 1999. A30.

3 Thaxton, Rob. "Red, White and Blue Fascism." Chain Reaction #5. 6-7.

4 Cook and Parenti, 3.

5 Heinlein, Gary. "Prison Sex Could Draw Prison Term." The Detroit News. 11
October 1999.

6 Pens, Dan. "Bag'm, Tag'm and Bury'm." 2.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid, 7.

9 Light, Julie. "Look for That Prison Label." The Progressive, June 2000.
http://www.prisonwall.org/labor.htm

10 Thompson. "Cancer in the Cells."

11 Sisters Behind Bars: Inside the Womens Prisons of California." Cites All
Too
Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. Prisons. Human Rights Watch Womens
Rights Project, December 1996.

12 Unruly Women. 250-251.

13 Paula Strothers' Regional Administrative Remedy Appeal, 6 November 1997.
(Reprinted in "Art From Inside: Out." January 1998. ABC No Rio.)

14 Human Rights Watch. 256-7.

15 Ibid, 259.

16 Letter from Dawn Amos. Dated 14 May 2001.

17 Letter from Dwight Correctional Center, Dated 20 March 2002. In many
states, a prisoner must go through and exhaust the prisons bureaucratic
grievance system before going to the courts for intervention.

18 Letter from Dawn Amos. Dated 14 May 2001.

19 Letter from Barrilee Bannister. Dated 21 June 2001.

20 The Fire Inside. #4. May 1997.

21 Letter from Dwight Correctional Center. Dated 8 May 2002.

Conclusion

1 Letter from Barrilee Bannister. Postmarked May 2002.

2 Letter from Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. Dated 5 May 2002.