Anonymous Comrade writes "Austin Anarchist Black Cross recently published as a pamphlet this paper by Vikki L.:"

Introduction

Within the scant research published about prisoner activism and instances of
resistance, women are nearly invisible. Although women in prison comprise
under six percent of the nations prison population, their numbers are
increasing more rapidly than those of their male counterparts: between 1990
and 2000, the rate of female incarceration increased 108%.1 However, the
interest in women prisoners' struggles against the prison-industrial complex
remains much lower than that of male prisoners'.

This invisibility is not new. In the early 1970s, recognizing that prisoners
are one of the most marginalized and voiceless populations in America,
activists expanded their interests to include those of prisoners and their
rights: new, critical analyses of prisons emerged, prisoners rights
organizations and unions were created, and there were new communications among
prisoners, academics and community activists. During this time, prisoners
writings became required texts in numerous university courses and some
universities began teaching courses inside prisons. However, in 1970,
researcher and activist Karlene Faith discovered that, to the male inmates of
Soledad, "female prisoners were as invisible to them as they were to the
broader public." Faith argues that this overlooking of women prisoners
occurred because not only were they fewer in number, but "they [also] were not
as politicized as the men [prisoners], and they did not engage in the kinds of
protest actions that aroused media attention."2 Women's concerns, if
recognized at all by the prisoners' rights movements, were dismissed as
personal, self-centered and apolitical. Similarly, it was not that women did
not engage in protest actions but that these actions were ignored by outside
movements, who chose to focus on the better-known names of male prisoners.
Thus, while male prisoners gained political consciousness and enjoyed support
from outside groups and individuals, many women in prison were neglected by
these same groups. With exceptions of well-known women inmates such as Angela
Davis and Assata Shakur, the prisoners' rights movement overlooked the female
prison population. These same observations hold true today. Male prisoners
seldom know about their female counterparts while the broader public, if
knowledgeable at all about prison issues, tends to focus on men.3 Juanita
Diaz-Cotto, one of the few scholars to study women prisoners activism, has
stated that the silence around women prisoners resistance from outside
prisoner rights and service groups stems from a reluctance to support activism
within womens prisons.4

Similar to the resurgence of interest in prisons and prisoner issues which
ignores prisoner activism, the new literature on women in prison focuses on the
causes, conditions and effects of imprisonment, but does not delve into what
the women themselves do to change or protest these circumstances. Faith, who
had coordinated the Santa Cruz Women's Prison Project in the 1970s, cites
virtually no examples of women's individual or collective acts of resistance in
her book Unruly Women. In In the Mix: Struggle and Survival in a Women's
Prison, Professor Barbara Owen admits that she developed a visible rapport with
prison staff at the Central California Women's Facility to facilitate her
interviews with the inmates. This obvious rapport may have led to distrust by
prisoners engaged in acts of resistance, resulting in either silence about
their actions or a total decline to be interviewed. Similarly, prison staff
may have steered her away from "problem" inmates so as not to expose any gross
violations or abuse occurring within the institution. Even Daniel
Burton-Rose's The Celling of America, which includes articles of prisoner
organizing, omits instances of female resistance, reflecting the continued lack
of outside recognition for women prisoners who act as their own agents for
social change.

Why the cloak of silence? One more prominent woman prisoner, Barrilee
Bannister, offered this explanation: "A lot of women believe themselves to be
helpless, due to how they were raised, or perhaps abused as a child. I see a
lot of women with very low self-esteem/worth."5 A study by the U.S. Department
of Justice found that over forty-three percent of women prisoners, as opposed
to twelve percent of male prisoners, had been physically or sexually abused
prior to their admission to prison.6 It also affirmed that womens earlier
socialization "had limited their independence and occupational choices."7
While this study was not directed towards the lack of activism among women
prisoners, its findings did affirm Bannisters observation. While interviewing
women inmates for her book In the Mix, Owen was told, "it is easier for women
to get bullied in here. If an officer raises his or her voice to you, some
women are petrified. The fear from past abuse comes back and they are scared.
Very scared."8 A 1999 Department of Justice study confirms these observations,
finding that almost half of women in jails and prisons had been physically or
sexually abused prior to their incarcerationa much higher rate than reported
for the overall population.9 Thus, women prisoners have to contend not only
with the apathy or inertia of their fellow inmates and the fear of
administrative retaliation, but also the issues of past abuse and socialization
of obedience and subservience that affect women. As a woman incarcerated in
Illinois put it : "Do you think women who are conditioned to be subservient
to their men (and the world) are going to come to prison and suddenly just grow
a backbone?" 10

Another explanation might be that women are perceived as passive. Faith
counters the argument that women prisoners lack self-esteem as a "blaming or
condescending projection by class-biased people who can't imagine that women
with so many problems could think well of themselvesGiven that most
incarcerated women have had to hustle in some way to survive, many of these
women might well have a greater sense of their resourcefulness than is the norm
among women, even when their means of survival appears self-destructive to
others."11 This perception leads to the dismissal of the notion that women
can and do contribute to struggles for change. Just as the civil rights
movement of the 1960s and 1970s downplayed the role of women in favor of
highlighting male spokesmen and leaders, the prisoners' rights movement focuses
on men to speak for the masses. Such neglect leads to the definition of prison
issues as masculine and male-dominated, dismissing prison issues which are
distinctly feminine (i.e. the scarcity of sanitary hygiene products, the lack
of medical care specifically for women, especially prenatal care, threats of
sexual abuse by guards, etc.) and thus any actions which women take to address
and overcome these concerns. Thus, researchers and scholars do not search out
acts of defiance among the growing female prison population.12 For instance,
on 28 August 1974, inmates at Bedford Hills protested the beating of a fellow
inmate by holding seven staff members hostage for two-and-a-half hours.
However, "the August Rebellion" is virtually unknown today despite the fact
that male state troopers and (male) guards from men's prisons were called to
suppress the uprising, injuring twenty-five women and that twenty-four women
were transferred to Matteawan Complex for the Criminally Insane without the
required commitment hearings.13 Because it lasted only two-and-a-half hours,
no one was killed and the story was relegated to a paragraph buried in the back
pages of The New York Times, the "August Rebellion" is seen as less dramatic
than the Attica Rebellion.14 The women at Bedford Hills also did not have the
opportunity to contact media, big-name supporters and politicians as the men at
Attica did. Thus, the "August Rebellion" is easily overlooked by those
seeking information on prisoner protests and disruptions.

Similarly, women in a California prison held a "Christmas riot" in 1975:
Protesting the cancellation of family holiday visits and holiday packages,
inmates gathered in the yard, broke windows, made noise and burned Christmas
trees in a "solidarity" bonfire. However, because no one had threatened
violence, this act of disruption is even more easily overlooked by those
researching prison disturbances.15

Juanita Diaz-Cotto stated that she was moved to record post-Attica prisoner
activism among Latinas in New York State after volunteering at a women's
prison: "Just as women in the outside community struggle daily to change
conditions we perceive to be oppressive, there have always been groups of women
who have organized within prison walls to try to change conditions."16
However, just as much of the research on women's issues downplays the role of
women themselves in challenging, if not changing, oppressive social policy and
practice, most research on women prisoners and their concerns do not share
Diaz-Cotto's concern for documenting women as active agents of social change.

Diaz-Cotto argues that social scientists studying women prisoners "highlight
the role played by women's prison family groups and kinship networks, almost to
the complete exclusion of other types of prisoner organization."17 The
emphasis on prison families not only substitutes for research into inmate
resistance but also reinforces the stereotype that women's sole concern is to
maintain their traditional gender roles.18 Diaz-Cotto has also observed that,
after the 1971 Attica Rebellion, the prevalence and importance of prison
families declined as prisoner groups and social services for female inmates
emerged.19 Similar to the overlooking of prisoner activism in favor of outside
prisoner rights' movements, research on women prisoners overwhelmingly favors
details of prison family and kinship networks over the more painstaking task of
searching out and documenting the less visible instances of resistance. This
becomes a self-perpetuating cycle: by highlighting the various family and
kinship networks to the exclusion of other forms of organization, scholars give
the impression that this is the only form of organizing within women's prisons,
not only silencing the voice of women prisoner activists but also paving the
way for others to do the same. Such emphasis also overestimates the
prevalence and influence of prison families. While Barrilee Bannister confirms
that these "families" still exist, she states that there are "very few here in
Oregon" and that "others kind of frown on itbeing [that] everyone sees them
stab one another in the back alot of times, or they fall out."20

Bannister also acknowledges that the lack of numbers is also an obstacle to
forming a womens movement behind bars. Male prisoners, on the other hand,
have more than sufficient numbers to organize inmate-led movements within their
facilities. Women prisoners not only lack a visible movement, but they are
often neglected by their male counterparts: Despite its large membership, the
Missouri Prison Labor Union, a five thousand member organization of Missouri
male prisoners and outside supporters which advocates minimum wage and decent
working conditions for all prisoner workers, has no women inmates as members.
Only in 2001, four years after its formation, have its organizers attempted to
outreach them and address their issues.21

Women prisoners also lack a common history of resistance. While male
prisoners have the example of George Jackson, the Attica uprising and other
well-publicized cases of prisoner activism, women remain unaware of precedents
relevant to them. Both Dawn Amos, imprisoned in Canon City, Colorado, and a
woman incarcerated in Illinois have remarked that illiteracy also plays a role
in womens lack of protest and resistance. Amos noted that most of the women
around her "are very illiterate, they dont even have education to take a
pre-GED test, let alone read a law book or even a newsletter about other
prisoners and what they have been subjected to. They can hardly comprehend the
rules that we have to live under let alone a way of comprehending a way to
stand up for their rights."22 Amoss observation echoes that of an earlier
letter from a prisoner in Illinois : "I know illiteracy is one of the
hindrances to pursuing any relief," she wrote. "We need to educated women how
to write grievances and we need to have available people to help [the]
illiterate and [the] mentally/emotionally ill prepare grievance[s] regarding
their rights."23

Added to this is the administrative harassment, dissuading possible
participants. One woman stated that the level of harassment is "so great that
most of your fellow prisoners think that you must be crazy for even attempting
to challenge the prison system wrong doings in anyways."24 Kebby Warner, a
prisoner in Michigan, has encountered similar resistance from her fellow
inmates: once she started to become aware that her plight was shared with
thousands of other women, she tried to organize and educate those around her
about the prison-industrial complex: "I was laughed at and they went so far as
accusing me of being a Klan member because of the way Amerikkka was spelled in
the zines I passed out. They wouldn't even read them."25 A woman released
from a Texas prison offered this explanation as to why she chose silence: "I
once tried to get my mom to know that there was abuse happening in the unit.
But when my letter was proread, it was turn[ed] in to the warden, which in turn
called me in the office and said if I wanted to remain in population I better
keep my opinions to myself. And I did not want to be in solitary
confinementso I closed up."26 Similarly, Barrilee Bannister, Dawn Amos and a
California inmate who wished to remain anonymous have stated that they are
reluctant to write about certain aspects and instances because their letter can
be and, at least in Bannisters case, are read by prison officials. Thus, even
for those interested in women prisoners organizing and acts of resistance, the
prisons monitoring of mail makes it virtually impossible to delve deeply.

Women prisoners also face different circumstances during their incarceration
and thus have different priorities and different ways of challenging their
conditions than their male counterparts.27 Prevalent ideas of prisoners are
masculine: the term "prisoner" usually connotes a young, black man convicted
of a violent crime such as rape or murder. Politicians seeking votes and media
seeking sales play on this representation, whipping the public into hysteria to
get tougher on crime and build more prisons. However, the image of the young,
black male felon omits the growing number of women imprisoned under the various
mandatory sentencing laws passed within the past few decades.28 Because women
do not fit the media stereotype, the public chooses to overlook them rather
than grapple with the seeming paradoxes inherent in women prisoners, who, by
virtue of their incarceration, have somehow defied the societal norm of
femininity.29 This is compounded by the seeming contradiction of prisoners as
mothers, as women with reproductive rights (or even the ability to reproduce),
and as women in general. Women prisoners and their differing needs and
concerns complicate the public perception of prisons and prisoners. However,
prison authorities have been slow to recognize these differences and thus
accord them the same, if not worse, treatment as their male counterparts.

CONTINUE

NOTES:

Introduction

1 Beck, Allen J. and Harrison, Paige M. "Prisoners in 2000." U.S. Department
of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics: August 2000. 1. This increase is
due, for the most part, to the mandatory sentencing laws. First-time offenses,
which would have been treated as misdemeanors, mandated treatment or dismissed
altogether now warrant harsh sentences. New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws
stipulates a sentence of fifteen years to life for anyone convicted of selling
two ounces or possessing four ounces of a narcotic. No regard is made to
circumstances or (lack of) prior history. The results ? In 1973, when the
Drug Laws were enacted, four hundred women were imprisoned in New York State.
As of January 1, 2001, there were 3,133. Over fifty percent had been convicted
of a drug offense and one in five were convicted solely of possession. (Women
in Prison Project of the Correctional Association of New York. "The Effects of
Imprisonment on Families." Cites New York State Department of Correctional
Services’ The Hub System : Profiles of Inmates Undercustody on January 1,
2001.) According to the Sentencing Project, the number of women imprisoned
nationwide for drug offenses rose 888 percent from 1986 to 1996. ("Drug Laws
Putting Too Many Women in Prison, Reform Group Says."
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/01/29/women.prison/

2 Faith, Karlene. "The Santa Cruz Women's Prison Project, 1972-1976."
Schooling in a"Total Institution." 174. For example, between 1969 and 1973,
there were four "disturbances" at a women's prison in Milledgeville, Georgia.
In 1973, ninety percent of the prisoners at the California Institution for
Women in Clinton, New Jersey, organized a three-day work stoppage to protest
the facility's poor mail distribution, food and medical care. In 1974, inmates
at the North Carolina Women's Prison in Raleigh held five days of protest about
the facility's poor medical and counseling services and demanded the closing of
the prison laundry. (See Juanita Diaz-Cotto's Gender, Ethnicity, and the
State: Latina and Latino Prison Politics. Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press, 1996. 318.) Despite the fact that these women employed tactics
similar to those of their male counterparts, these acts of organizing and
resistance are relegated to the footnotes.

3 When I began this research, I asked the former president of a male prisoner
organization, a member of the Missouri Prison Labor Union and an anarchist
prisoner what they knew about women prisoners. Their responses confirmed that
male prisoners, even those struggling against the prison-industrial complex,
remain virtually unaware of their female counterparts and the issues
confronting them.

4 Diaz-Cotto, Juanita. "Re/Constructing Intimacy and Sexuality." With/Out
Walls. CUNY Graduate School and University Center, 12 April 2002.

5 Letter from Barrilee Bannister, postmarked 2 February 2001.

6 Morash, Merry. Bynum, Timothy S. Koons, Barbara A. "Women Offenders:
Programming Needs and Promising Approaches." U.S. Department of Justice.
National Institute of Justice: Research in Brief. August 1998. 1.

7 Ibid. 10.

8 Owen, Barbara. "In the Mix": Struggle and Survival in a Women's Prison.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. 164.

9 Richie, Beth E. Tsenin, Kay. Widom, Cathy Spatz. "Female Offenders,
Pornography and Prostitution, Child Abuse and Neglect." U.S. Department of
Justice Research Forum: Research on Women and Girls in the Justice System.
Volume 3. 1999.

10 Letter from Dwight Correctional Center. Dated 20 March 2002.

11 Faith, Karlene. "The Politics of Confinement and Resistance: The
Imprisonment of Women." Criminal Injustice: Confronting the Prison Crisis. Ed.
Elihu Rosenblatt. South End Press, 1998. 168.

12 Radical scholar Nancy Kurshan, in acknowledging the lack of documentation
around women prisoners' activism, argues, "We do not believe that is because
resistance does not occur, but rather because those in charge of documenting
history have a stake in burying this herstory. Such a herstory would challenge
the patriarchal ideology that insists that women are, by nature, passive and
docile." She then cites instances of resistance and rebellion in women's
prisons from the Civil War period to the 1970s.

13 Diaz-Cotto, Juanita. Gender, Ethnicity, and the State: Latina and Latino
Prison Politics. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996.324-5.

14 The New York Times’ coverage of the "August Rebellion" was all of one
paragraph on page 33 on 30 August 1974 and another short paragraph on page 51
on 10 October 1974. That the Times also characterized the cause of the
uprising as a fight between two inmates dismisses the notion that the women
involved were protesting the staff’s treatment of them.

15 Faith, Karlene. Unruly Women: The Politics and Confinement of Resistance.
Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1993. 235.

16 Diaz-Cotto, xiv.

17 Ibid, 5.

18 For more information on prison family groups among women, see Angela
Davis's autobiography, Joycelyn Pollock-Byrne's Women, Prison and Crime, and
Diaz-Cotto. However, according to Diaz-Cotto, the existence of such prison
family groups did, in some instances, facilitate inmate organizing: "While
individual prisoners might not care much about organizing to reform prison
conditions, when requested to do so by other family members, they typed
petitions, translated grievances, collected evidence of guard abuses, and
passed messages to prisoners in other housing areas." (Diaz-Cotto, 302)

19 Diaz-Cotto. "Re/Constructing Intimacy and Sexuality."

20 Letter from Barrilee Bannister. Dated 20 April 2002.

21 Letter from Jerome White-Bey. Dated 4 November 2000.

22 Letter from Dawn Amos. Dated 15 March 2002.

23 Letter from Dwight Correctional Center. Dated 2 January 2002.

24 Letter from Oregon Women's Correctional Center.

25 Letter from Kebby Warner. Dated 29 April 2001. In many radical and prison
abolition writings, especially those found in zines (underground publications),
"America" is spelt "Amerikkka" to signify the country's institutional racism.

26 "H.D." "re: Women Prisoners’ Resistance." E-mail to the author. 2 May
2002.

27 One issue particular to female inmates is the distribution of sanitary
napkins. For instance, in New York State prisons, each inmate is allocated a
set number of napkins per year. Because of the scarce supply, many women are
forced to reuse and share them. (Human Rights Watch Women's Project. All Too
Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons. Washington, DC: Human
Rights Watch, 1996. Cites interview with Rhea S. Mallet, The Correctional
Association of New York. 30 January 1996.)

28 Both Barrilee Bannister and Dawn Amos, white women, were sentenced under
their respective states’ mandatory minimum laws for violent crimes, and are
only two of many women who contradict the stereotype of the young, black, male
predator. However, in Bannister’s case, her ineligibility of sentence
reduction for " good behavior "gives her little to lose for speaking out: "They really can’t do much to me other than keep writing me up—keep me in seg
longer and fining me. They can’t break my spirit or freedom of speech."
(Letter from Barrilee Bannister. Postmarked 7 January 2002). In California,
fifty-four percent of the women in prison were sentenced for drug offenses in
comparison to thirty-eight percent of the state’s total population. In
Minnesota, twenty-seven percent of women in prison were sentenced for drug
offenses in comparison to five percent of the state’s total population. (The
Sentencing Project. "Executive Summary. Gender and Justice : Women, Drugs
and Sentencing Policy."
http://www.sentencingproject.org/news/executive%20 summary.html

29 Diaz-Cotto details the seeming paradox of women prisoners and the Department
of Corrections’ reaction to their transgression of societal expectations in her
section on Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Gender, Ethnicity and the
State.

CONTINUE