by Robin Levi & Ayelet Waldman
The long drive out from the San Francisco Bay Area to Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California, is always a stressful one. The anxiety begins early, when we get dressed, making sure to comply with the ever-shifting, always onerous dress code for visitors to the prison. There is a long list of banned colors and fabrics: no denim or chambray, no lime green or orange, no tan, no attire similar in any way to military fatigues. In regulations reminiscent of Catholic girls’ schools of the 1970s, skirts must end no more than two inches above the knee, and “spaghetti” straps are forbidden. Jewelry is limited to only two rings, and one set of earrings. And then there is the most bizarre rule of all, given how closely all interactions between prisoners and visitors are monitored: female visitors are forbidden to wear underwire bras.
The closer we get to the prison, by the time we have driven through Tracy, Modesto, and finally Turlock, with its almond orchards and fields of cows, a pall usually descends. There is something about the prospect of submitting to the absolute and arbitrary authority of the prison Corrections staff that intimidates and depresses even the most seasoned prison visitor. Although we’ve sent in the names, social security numbers, and driver’s license copies of the interviewers, although we’ve managed to track down a working tape recorder that complies with prison regulations—no digital recorders are permitted, only MiniDisc recorders (of a specific brand and type no longer produced)—we know, from experience, that it is still possible that we will be turned away. It’s possible that the women whose visits we requested might have broken one of the myriad prison rules and ended up in segregation, and thus banned from our visit. We know that we could be turned away for this or any reason, or for no reason at all.
When we pull into the prison parking lot, we grow quiet, careful of listening ears and watchful eyes. We pass through the metal detector and stand before a twenty-foot-tall barbed fence, waiting for it to slide open. Then we cross the field to the prison building, greeted by small bunnies hopping through the short grass—an incongruity in the otherwise barren environment.
Once we’ve passed through the rigmarole of metal detectors, barbed wire, and pat-downs to get to the visiting room, and the women whom we are visiting make it through their own gauntlet (strip, squat, cough), our malaise always lifts. Our spirits are raised not by the topics of the interviews, which are always and inevitably painful, but by the women themselves. Despite being incarcerated under grim conditions, they demonstrate dignity, courage, and generosity as they recount their often traumatic experiences before and since their incarceration.
The narratives in this collection, as told by these individuals and others in correctional facilities across the country, highlight human rights abuses in the U.S. prison system. Narrators describe their lack of access to adequate healthcare, including mental healthcare and pregnancy care. They also recount experiences of questionable medical procedures—Olivia Hamilton was forced to have a cesarean section, while Sheri Dwight had her ovaries removed without her consent or knowledge. Our narrators describe sexual and physical abuse suffered inside the prison, and the daily indignities they face just trying to ensure they have enough toilet paper, soap, and menstrual pads. In addition, they recount the myriad abusive situations that led to their imprisonment and to recidivism. These include the lack of adequate treatment for drug addiction, domestic and sexual violence, and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The women featured in this volume come from all over the United States, represent a variety of ethnicities, and their offenses range from the minor (check forgery, drug possession) to the most serious (murder). These are women who have been silent for most of their lives, whose desires and needs were ignored by often abusive families and spouses, and, later, by prison authorities. They tell us their stories here because it is, for many of them, the first chance they’ve had to be heard.
According to the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2.3 million people are currently imprisoned in the United States—more per capita than any other country in the world. People in U.S. prisons are routinely subjected to physical, sexual, and mental abuse. While abuse in male prisons is well documented, women in prison suffer in relative anonymity. This disparity is especially troubling, since women in prison are in many cases more vulnerable to rights violations for three main reasons: women’s prisons are generally more geographically isolated and thus less subject to outside oversight; women are predominantly incarcerated for nonviolent offenses; and, due to their histories of sexual and physical abuse, women are both more likely to suffer serious health consequences and less likely to complain of abuses within the prison system.
As Michelle Alexander points out in her foreword, people of color are vastly over-represented in the American criminal justice system. According to a 2009 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, one out of every nine black men between the ages of twenty and thirty-four is behind bars. This racial disparity is also reflected in the women’s prisons in this country. Nearly half of those imprisoned are women of color. Thirty-four percent are black, despite the fact that black people make up only 6.7 percent of the general population.1
Though women make up only a small minority of the prison and jail population, slightly less than 7 percent, their numbers are increasing at rates that far surpass men. In 1977, 11,212 women were in prison. As of 2007, that number had increased to 107,000. The number of women in prison has grown dramatically since the 1980s due to several factors: mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes which preclude judicial discretion, the dismantling of the U.S. mental health system, and increased prosecution of “survival” crimes, which include check forgery and minor embezzlement. Over the last four decades, hundreds of thousands of women have been sentenced to jail and prison for nonviolent and first-time offenses, for offenses that arise from drug addiction or mental health problems, or as a result of minor involvement in offenses perpetrated by their husbands or boyfriends.
Because women are a minority in the prison system, they face particular challenges. A prison healthcare system designed for men that mandates, for example, shackling during transportation to and from the hospital, suddenly rises from the unpleasant to the horrific when the transported prisoner shackled at the ankles is a woman in the late stages of active labor, as experienced by Olivia Hamilton.
One of the most striking things about our experience in collecting these narratives has been the overwhelming prevalence of histories of sexual abuse. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, two-thirds of women in prison have experienced sexual and physical abuse in their lives, a statistic that was reflected in our interviews. Francesca Salavieri was sexually abused from the age of six by family members, while Teri Hancock was given as a “gift” to a step-uncle to abuse as he liked. The sexual abuse and violence that women in prison endure usually comes at the hands not of other prisoners, but of guards and staff. Not once in creating this volume did we come across a woman who described being sexually abused by another prisoner. On the contrary, when women are raped, or when sex is demanded as payment for “privileges” such as medical care or family visits, the perpetrators are guards and staff.
Because prisons are managed under a patchwork of state regulations and are increasingly privatized, there is variation across the country in prison conditions and access to remedies when abuses occur. In Michigan, for example, until the groundbreaking work of attorney Deborah LaBelle, women were subject to horrific and near-constant sexual abuse, while in other states, because of more enlightened prison practices, sexual violence is nearly nonexistent.
Despite state-to-state differences, overall commonalities across the country are striking. Healthcare is rarely adequate, and usually requires a co-pay that is difficult for women to manage on their paltry incomes, which for most women in prison is less than $1 a day. Their daily lives are often characterized by degrading treatment and routine privacy violations. Women across the country experience enormous difficulty in maintaining family relationships, or even relationships with their legal representation, because of the erection of barriers to communication with the outside world.
Eighty percent of women in prison in the United States are the primary caretakers of children, but women’s facilities are few and far between, and are often located far from families and communities. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for mothers to maintain relationships with their children. Marilyn Sanderson, for example, has not seen her children in fifteen years, and yet she thinks of them constantly. Women are isolated in these distant facilities, separated both from families and from advocates, and are forced to navigate often draconian regulations to maintain letter or phone contact. Even then, they are subject to the whims of prison officials, who sometimes refuse to deliver mail without legitimate reason, as happened to Teri Hancock. Women must jump through a myriad of bureaucratic hoops to receive visits from family and friends, if visitation is allowed at all. For six years, Emily Madison lost all her visitation rights because she was found in possession of pills: a Motrin and an iron capsule. Most egregiously, even telephone contact is strictly limited, with collect calls priced far beyond the norm in the outside world, and access is often dependent on deposits as high as $50.
Generally, it has become ever more difficult for people in prison to assert their basic human rights to protection from violence, to decent conditions of confinement, and to minimal healthcare. In 1996, Congress passed the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), which erected procedural barriers to litigation that preclude civil rights lawsuits in the vast majority of instances. Women in prison are forced to rely on internal prison-grievance systems, which vary widely from state to state, and are often inadequate to remedy even the most blatant violations. For many like Maria Taylor, attempts to hold officers responsible for their abusive behavior result in frightening acts of retribution. In addition, many prisons bar the media from freely communicating with people inside prison, which keeps the public from ever knowing what goes on behind bars.
In reading this volume, it is important to realize that, while the narratives here are skewed toward people who have been sentenced to long terms for serious crimes, this does not reflect the actual population of women in prison and jail. Of the over 100,000 women who are currently under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system, more than half are imprisoned for nonviolent or victimless crimes such as drug possession, prostitution, or check forging. However, it was impossible for us to gain access to women in the network of county and city jails, where nearly half of women serve their time. Our work was limited to various state prison systems, and within those, the women who were most likely to participate had served sufficient time to build up the reserves of strength necessary to discuss the intimate and often traumatic details described in these narratives, as well as to develop the relationships with advocates such that we knew to contact them.
Furthermore, it is these women, who are serving sentences of decades or life without parole, who have the least to lose from exposing the truth of their conditions of confinement, and the most to gain from risking the often terrible retaliation to which such honesty exposes them. If, as a result of this volume, awareness is raised and change is made, they will still be inside to benefit from it. Additionally, telling their stories has led many women to experience feelings of personal empowerment, control, and a restoration of dignity.
There were many more women who wanted to participate in this project but were unable to because the prisons in which they are incarcerated are too far away or difficult to gain access to. In response, we set up a system whereby women could send in letter narratives. Sarah Chase, a young woman serving twenty years to life, was sexually abused by a guard who was then fired. The other guards then began a campaign of harsh retaliatory abuse, which ultimately led to Sarah being moved to a prison thousands of miles from her home, allegedly for her own protection. This prison was physically inaccessible to us, but Sarah participated in the project primarily through letters, and her narrative is thus included in the volume.
Inside this Place, Not of It is the result of more than seventy interviews with over thirty individuals, conducted over the course of ten months. For this project, we assembled a team of nineteen interviewers, who fanned out across the country, visiting women inside prisons, halfway houses, and in their homes. Fact-checking was conducted to the best of our abilities, but did not come without its challenges.
We used court records, human rights reports, medical records, and multiple external sources, but it is important to bear in mind that the narratives in this volume recount instances of abuse at the hands of the very system that controls the paper trail. In cases where litigation resulted in depositions and testimony, or where medical records existed, it was relatively easy to verify a woman’s story. However, in many instances, the barriers to litigation discussed earlier not only precluded any redress, but also left on the record only the prison authorities’ refusal to investigate allegations of abuse.
Additionally, the women who shared their lives in this volume experienced significant levels of trauma, both before and after their imprisonment. It is well documented that post-traumatic stress disorder, especially when complicated by depression, affects memory. Our narrators have done their best to verify their own memories, but oral history is by its very nature subjective. As the great author and oral historian Studs Terkel wrote in Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, “This is a memory book rather than one of hard fact and precise statistics… The precise fact or the precise date is of small consequence. This is not a lawyer’s brief nor an annotated sociological treatise. It is simply an attempt to get the story from an improvised battalion of survivors.”
In contemporary American society, we so often think of people in prison as entirely different from ourselves. When politicians want to gain easy points with voters, they get tough on crime, or on “criminals.” This is a population, after all, that is politically disenfranchised. Unlike in other Western countries, individuals convicted of crimes in the United State lose their right to vote not only while imprisoned, but in many cases for the rest of their lives. When considering these individuals’ paths to imprisonment, we cannot lay fault solely at their feet. Through failure to address poverty and lack of access to education, through failure to effectively combat domestic abuse and abuse of children, our society fails these women. And then, rather than investing in communities to redress these problems, we instead invest in prisons to warehouse far too many of our people.
Editing this volume has been a great privilege, not only because we are helping to bring to light stories that otherwise might not have been told, but because we were so fortunate to have met these remarkable women. These are women who have forged bonds of community and friendship under the most trying of circumstances. That a feeling of community can develop in these circumstances may be surprising to people used to thinking of prisons as only violent and terrifying places. But the women inside do develop warm and loving relationships. They form support groups, such as the Two Spirits group, founded by Charlie Morningstar, for lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. They help one another to survive, and even to flourish, when isolation and despair would have been far more obvious a response. We are grateful to them for their example, for their inspiration, and for the remarkable courage it took to tell their stories.
—Robin Levi and Ayelet Waldman, 2011
1 Throughout this volume, we use the inclusive term “black people” to describe all people of African descent, including those whose families have lived in the United States for generations, and those who have arrived more recently and may not identify as African American.