Beyond Attica: The Untold Story of Women's Resistance Behind Bars

By Hans Bennett, AlterNet. Posted July 21, 2009

Book Review:

RESISTANCE BEHIND BARS
The Struggles of Incarcerated Women
by Victoria Law
PM Press, 2009

"When I was 15, my friends started going to jail," says
Victoria Law, a native New Yorker. "Chinatown's gangs were
recruiting in the high schools in Queens and, faced with the
choice of stultifying days learning nothing in overcrowded
classrooms or easy money, many of my friends had dropped out
to join a gang."

"One by one," Law recalls, "they landed in Rikers Island, an
entire island in New York City devoted to pretrial detainment
for those who can not afford bail."

Law shares this and other recollections in her new book, Resistance
Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. At 16, she herself
decided to join a gang, but was arrested for the armed robbery that
she committed for her initiation into the gang. "Because it was my
first arrest—and probably because 16-year-old Chinese girls who get
straight A's in school did not seem particularly menacing—I was
eventually let off with probation," she writes.

Before her release from jail, Law was held in the "Tombs" awaiting
arraignment. While the adult women she met there had all been
arrested for prostitution, she also met three teenagers arrested for
unarmed assault. "Two of the girls were black lesbian lovers. In a
scenario that would be repeated 13 years later in the case of the New
Jersey Four, they had been out with friends when they encountered a
cab driver who had tried to grab one of them. Her friends intervened,
the cab driver called the police and the girls were arrested for
assault." Law notes that "both of my cellmates were subsequently sent
to Rikers Island."

These early experiences, coupled with her later discovery of radical
politics, pushed Law "to think about who goes to prison and why." She
got involved in several projects to support prisoners, which included
helping to start Books Through Bars in New York City, sending free
books to prisoners. In college, she "began researching current
prisoner organizing and resistance," and upon discovering almost zero
documentation of resistance from women prisoners, she began her own
documentation and directly contacted women prisoners who were
resisting. A college paper became a widely distributed pamphlet, and
at the request of several women prisoners she'd corresponded with,
Law helped to publish their writings in a zine called Tenacious: Art
and Writings from Women in Prison. Law writes that the zine and
pamphlet "heightened awareness not only about incarcerated women's
issues, but also women's actions to challenge and change the
injustices they faced on a daily basis."

"This book is the result of seven and a half years of reading,
writing, listening, and supporting women in prison," Law says about
Resistance Behind Bars, noting that each chapter in her book "focuses
on an issue that women themselves have identified as important." The
chapters include topics as diverse as health care, the relationship
between mothers and daughters, sexual abuse, education, and
resistance among women in immigration detention. Resistance Behind
Bars paints a picture of women prisoners resisting a deeply flawed
prison system, which Law hopes will help to empower both the women
held in cages and those on the outside working to support them.

Who Goes to Prison?
Since 1970, the US prison population has skyrocketed, from 300,000 to
over 2.3 million. According to the US Justice Department, this
staggering increase has not resulted from a rise in crime. Since
1993, the prison population has increased by over one million, but
during this same period, both property offenses and serious violent
crime have been steadily declining.

The New York Times recently cited a 2008 report by the International
Center for Prison Studies at King's College London documenting that
the US has more prisoners than any other country. Furthermore, with
751 out of 100,000 people, and one out of every 100 adults in prison
or jail, the US also has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
With only five percent of the world’s population, the US has almost a
quarter of the world's prisoners.

While women comprise only nine percent of the U.S. prison population,
their numbers have been increasing at a faster rate than men. As Law
documents, "between 1990 and 2000, the number of women in prison rose
108 percent, from 44,065 to 93,234. (The male prison population grew
77 percent during that same time period.) By the end of 2006, 112,498
women were behind bars."

Like with male incarceration rates, women behind bars are
disproportionately low-income and people of color. Law writes that
"only 40 percent of all incarcerated women had been employed
full-time before incarceration. Of those, most had held low-paying
jobs: a study of women under supervision (prison, jail, parole or
probation) found that two-thirds had never held a job that paid more
than $6.50 per hour. Approximately 37 percent earned less than $600
per month."

A 2007 Bureau of Justice study documented that 358 of every 100,000
Black women, 152 of every 100,000 Latinas, and 94 of every 100,000
white women are incarcerated. Explaining this racial discrepancy, Law
argues that inner-city Black and Latino neighborhoods are
disproportionately targeted by law enforcement. She cites a 2005 US
Department of Justice study which concluded that Blacks and Latinos
are "three times as likely as whites to be searched, arrested,
threatened or subdued with force when stopped by the police."

The so-called "War on Drugs" has played a key role in the growth of
the US prison population. Law writes about the impact of New York
State's Rockefeller Drug Laws passed in 1973, "which required a
sentence of 15 years to life for anyone convicted of selling two
ounces or possessing four ounces of a narcotic, regardless of
circumstances or prior history. That year, only 400 women were
imprisoned in New York State. As of January 1, 2001, there were
3,133. Over 50 percent had been convicted of a drug offense and 20
percent were convicted solely of possession. Other states passed
similar laws, causing the number of women imprisoned nationwide for
drug offenses to rise 888 percent from 1986 to 1996."

Distinguishing women prisoners from their male counterparts, Law
cites a Bureau of Justice study which "found that women were three
times more likely than men to have been physically or sexually abused
prior to incarceration."

Women Prisoners Don't Resist?
The central thesis of Resistance Behind Bars is truly profound. In
clear, non-academic language, Law argues that recent scholarship
documenting and radically criticizing the increased incarceration
rates and mistreatment of women prisoners "largely ignores what the
women themselves do to change or protest these circumstances, thus
reinforcing the belief that incarcerated women do not organize."
Alongside academia, Law also harshly criticizes radical prison
activists, arguing that "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 has
focused and continues to focus on men to speak for the masses."

Law gives honorable mention to two books that documented women's
resistance at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York State:
Juanita Diaz-Cotto's Gender, Ethnicity, and the State (1996) and the
collectively written Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in
a New York State Maximum Security Prison (1998). Since these two
books "no other book-length work has focused on incarcerated women's
activism and resistance," writes Law. As a result, Law argues that
women prisoners "lack a commonly known history of resistance. While
male prisoners can draw on the examples of George Jackson, the Attica
uprising and other well-publicized cases of prisoner activism,
incarcerated women remain unaware of precedents relevant to them."

Epitomizing the scholarship that Law criticizes, author Virginia High
Brislin wrote that "women inmates themselves have called very little
attention to their situations," and "are hardly ever involved in
violent encounters with officials (i.e. riots), nor do they initiate
litigation as often as do males in prison."

To challenge Brislin's assertion, Law gives numerous examples of
women rioting and initiating litigation, including the "August
Rebellion" in 1974 at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York
State. On July 2, 1974, prisoner Carol Crooks won a lawsuit against
prison authorities, with the court "issuing a preliminary injunction,
prohibiting the prison from placing women in segregation without
24-hour notice and a hearing of these charges," writes Law. In
response, "five male guards beat Crooks and placed her in
segregation. Her fellow prisoners protested by holding seven staff
members hostage for two and a half hours. However, 'the August
Rebellion' is virtually unknown today despite that fact that male
state troopers and (male) guards from men's prisons were called to
suppress the uprising, resulting in 25 women being injured and 24
women being transferred to Matteawan Complex for the Criminally
Insane without the required commitment hearings."

Law also criticizes author Karlene Faith, who acknowledges that women
resist, but who wrote that in the 1970s, women prisoners "were not as
politicized as the men [prisoners], and they did not engage in the
kinds of protest actions that aroused media attention." To challenge
Faith's argument, Law cites several rebellions that received
significant media attention, including one that the New York Times
wrote two stories about. As Law recounts, "in 1975, women at the
North Carolina Correctional Center for Women held a sit-down
demonstration to demand better medical care, improved counseling
services, and the closing of the prison laundry. When prison guards
attempted to end the protest by herding the women into the gymnasium
and beating them, the women fought back, using volleyball net poles,
chunks of concrete and hoe handles to drive the guards out of the
prison. Over 100 guards from other prisons were summoned to quell the
rebellion."

In light of the many such stories documented in Resistance Behind
Bars, Law argues that "instead of claiming that women in prison did
not engage in riots and protest actions that captured media
attention, scholars and researchers should examine why these acts of
organizing fail to attract the same critical and scholarly attention
as that given to similar male actions."

Resisting With Media-Activism
In the chapter "Grievances, Lawsuits, and the Power of the Media,"
Law observes that "gaining media attention often gains quicker
results than filing lawsuits." Among the many organizing victories
that were significantly aided by media attention, in 1999, Nightline
focused on conditions at California's Valley State Prison for Women.
Law explains that "after prisoner after prisoner told Nightline
anchor Ted Koppel about being given a pelvic exam as 'part of the
treatment' for any ailment, including stomach problems or diabetes,
Koppel asked the prison's chief medical officer Dr. Anthony
DiDomenico, for an explanation."

DiDomenico was apparently so confident that he would not be held
accountable for his misconduct, that he answered Koppel by saying
"I've heard inmates tell me they would deliberately like to be
examined. It's the only male contact they get." After this interview
was aired, DiDomenico was reassigned to a desk job, and as of 2001 he
had been criminally indicted, along with a second doctor.

Demonstrating the power of this media coverage, Law notes that the
"prisoner advocacy organization Legal Services for Prisoners with
Children had been reporting the prisoners' complaints about medical
staff's sexual misconduct to the CDC for four years with no result."

Along with agitating for coverage in the mainstream media, women
prisoners have also created their own media projects. The chapter
titled "Breaking The Silence: Incarcerated Women's Media" documents
many important projects. Law explains that these projects are
necessary because women prisoners' "voices and stories still remain
unheard by both mainstream and activist-oriented media. Articles
about both prison conditions and prisoners often portray the male
prisoner experience, ignoring the different issues facing women in
prison." Therefore, "women's acts of writing—and publishing—often
serve a dual purpose: they challenge existing stereotypes and
distortions of prisoners and prison life, framing and correcting
prevailing (mis) perceptions. They also boost women's sense of
self-worth and agency in a system designed to not only isolate and
alienate its prisoners but also erase all traces of individuality."

Some activist-oriented publications have been receptive and have
published prisoners' writings. From 1999 until its final issue in
2002, the radical feminist magazine Sojourner: A Women's Forum
featured a section on women prisoner issues which included writings
from the prisoners themselves. Law writes that this section, entitled
"Inside/Outside" covered many topics, including "working conditions
in women's facilities, the dehumanizing treatment of children
visiting their mothers, and prisoner suicides.

Law spotlights many different projects. From 2002 to 2006,
Perceptions was a monthly newspaper published by and for the women at
the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey. Because
of censorship from prison warden Charlotte Blackwell, Perceptions was
forced to limit its criticism of the prison, but the women published
what they could. For example, in one issue, women wrote about how
they would run the prison differently if they were in charge. Law
notes that "their fantasies revealed the absence of programming for
older women and those in the maximum custody unit, emergency
counseling and therapeutic interventions and opportunities for
mother-child interactions. It also drew attention to the facility's
overcrowding and increased potentials for violence and conflict among
prisoners."

Tenacious, the zine published by Law, was initiated by women
prisoners who sought the help of friends outside the prison to
actually publish and distribute it. "Free from the need to seek
administrative approval, incarcerated women wrote about the
difficulties of parenting from prison, dangerously inadequate health
care, sexual assault by prison staff and the scarcity of educational
and vocational opportunities, especially in comparison to their male
counterparts. Although circulation remained small, the women's
stories provoked public response," writes Law.

"Prison officials do whatever they can to strip prisoners of their
dignity and self-worth," stated Barrilee Bannister, one of the
founders of Tenacious. "Writing is my way to escape the confines of
prison and the debilitating ailments of prison life. It's me putting
on boxing gloves and stepping into the rink of freedom of speech and
opinion."

Arguing for Prison Abolition
When Victoria Law was first introduced to radical politics, shortly
after her own stint behind bars, she "discovered groups and
literature espousing prison abolition."

"These analyses—coupled with what I had seen firsthand—made sense,
steering me to work towards the dismantling, rather than the reform,
of the prison system." Law's subsequent research has only served to
affirm her belief in the need for abolition. She states clearly that
"this book should not be mistaken for a call for more humane or
'gender responsive' prisons."

Some readers may view Law's prison abolitionist politics as being
abstract or overly theoretical. However, to support her abolitionist
viewpoint, she makes the practical argument that prisons simply don't
work to reduce crime or increase public safety. She writes that
"incarceration has not decreased crime; instead, 'tough on crime'
policies have led to the criminalization … of more activities,
leading to higher rates of arrest, prosecution and incarceration
while shifting money and resources away from other public entities,
such as education, housing, health care, drug treatment, and other
societal supports. The growing popularity of abolitionist thought can
be seen in the expansion of organizations such as Critical
Resistance, an organization fighting to end the need for a
prison-industrial complex, and the formation of groups working to
address issues of crime and victimization without relying on the
police or prisons."

Towards the end of Resistance Behind Bars, Law quotes Angela Y.
Davis, who is a leading activist intellectual of the prison
abolitionist movement. In her recent book Are Prisons Obsolete?,
Davis writes that "a major challenge of this movement is to do the
work that will create more human, habitable environments for people
in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system.
How, then, do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately
attending to the needs of prisoners—calling for less violent
conditions, an end to sexual assault, improved physical and mental
health care, greater access to drug programs, better educational work
opportunities, unionization of prison labor, more connections with
families and communities, shorter or alternative sentencing—and at
the same time call for alternatives to sentencing altogether, no more
prison construction, and abolitionist strategies that question the
place of the prison in our future?"

As if answering Davis' question, Law concludes that while striving
for prison abolition "we need to also reach in, make contact with
those who have been isolated by prison walls and societal
indifference and listen to those who are speaking out, like many of
the women who have shared their stories within this book. Because
abolishing prisons will not happen tomorrow, next week or even next
year, we need to break through these barriers, communicate, work with
and support women who are in resistance today."

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Hans Bennett is an independent multi-media journalist whose website
is Insubordination

http://www.alternet.org/story/141474/