Women in Prison
The postman not having brought me my usual batch of student papers to be read today, I felt free to slip away to the OSI panel on women in prison. I found it to be a deeply moving event, attended by something over 100 -- both professionals working in this area and ex-cons. The 3 (really four panelists) did a remarkably effective job of opening up this subject of women thrust into the most barbaric imaginable conditions in our nation's prisons. Each of the panelists works personally to assist as best she can to make life a little more bearable for these women among the barbarities of the U.S. prison system.
I had wanted to query the panelists as to how many of the women they encountered there were not guilty of direct criminal acts. As a legal philosopher I am well aware that innocent defendants in our system are all too often advised by harassed public advocate attorneys to plead guilty to 'lesser crimes' that they have not committed to avoid draconian prison sentences for those with which they have been charged. Also I became graphically aware while serving on a grand jury dealing mainly with drug prosecution that that drug enforcement in this country is mainly focused on poor urban communities (five of them in NYC) and is a 'game' for most participants which can murderously destroy the lives of some whose only crime is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, e.g. in a home of a drug dealer when a police bust occurs. Our jury met 3 such recent immigrants -- obedient wives (of Dominicans running 'kitchen" drug operations) with very young children -- who pled with us (unsuccessfully) not to indict so that they would not face being removed from their children for a mandatory minimum 15 years.
I did not try to ask this question as it quickly became obvious that those speaking during the question period were either experts in the field contributing insights, say as a prison chaplain, or themselves ex-cons -- in several cases both in one person.
What a horror. We now have 1/4 of the world's prison population in our U.S. jails 2.1 million and growing. Approximately 6 million Americans are one way or another entangled in or scarred by our brutal system of incarceration, including now nearly 1 million women!
May decent people work to end off these horrors and as one expert (who had also been incarcerated) suggested might we try to convert systems of 'punishment' to systems of 'correction' -- the misnomer applied to some of our most vicious prisons which now destroy thousands of persons each year.
I have edited out some of the particulars below of the invitation to this event now past. Ed Kent
Open Society Institute
A panel discussion featuring:
Cristina Rathbone, Investigative Journalist and Author
Eve Ensler, Author and Activist, V-Day, The Vagina Monologues
Vivian Nixon, Executive Director, College and Community
Fellowship, CUNY Graduate Center
Moderated by:
Deborah Small, Executive Director, Break the Chains
Cristina Rathbone spent five years visiting women prisoners at
MCI-Framingham outside of Boston. A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life
Behind Bars is a first-hand look at the prison and the women she came to
know there. The book also relates Rathbone's long legal struggle to gain
access to the women inside. Like most prisons in the U.S., the
Massachusetts Department of Correction has an elaborate system in place
to keep journalists at bay. A World Apart shows us why prison officials
are so eager to keep journalists out.
Women are the fastest growing group of people incarcerated in
the nation; over 950,000 women are currently under some form of
correctional supervision in the United States. A World Apart brings
attention to this ongoing crisis playing out across the United States.
Putting a human face to the statistics, Rathbone introduces us to
incarcerated women and their families, examining the devastating
consequences of mandatory minimum sentencing, and providing an
eye-witness account of prison conditions.
The panel will feature the following speakers:
Eve Ensler is the Obie-Award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues,
and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against
women and girls. She is the recipient of many awards, including a
Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Playwriting, the Berrilla-Kerr Award for
Playwriting, the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance,
and the 2002 Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award for Leadership.
She is Chair of the Women's Committee of PEN American Center and is an
Executive Producer of What I Want My Words to Do to You, a documentary
about the writing group she has led since 1998 at the Bedford Hills
Correctional Facility for Women. The film had its world premiere at the
2003 Sundance Film Festival where it received the "Freedom of
Expression" award and premiered nationally on PBS's "P.O.V." in December
2003.
Vivian Nixon is an ordained minister and executive director of
the College and Community Fellowship at the City University of New York,
which provides intensive academic support and public leadership
development for formerly incarcerated women. She also currently serves
as an associate minister at the Mt. Olive AME Church in Port Washington,
NY. In March 2004, Reverend Nixon received the Lifting as We Climb
Advocacy Award from the Correctional Association of New York. In January
2005, she was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship from the Open Society
Institute to launch Re-Enter-Grace, an advocacy and education project
aimed at religious leaders and their communities. She is currently
writing a book about her experiences entitled, Guilty and Saved:
Revelations of a Previously Incarcerated Preacher Woman.
Cristina Rathbone is a writer and investigative journalist, and
has written for numerous magazines and newspapers including the New York
Daily News, Latina Magazine, Out and the Miami Herald. Her last book, On
the Outside Looking In: A Year In An Inner City High School was a
finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, won the Delta Kappa Gamma
International Educators Award, and was selected as one of the best books
of the year by the New York Public Library. Ms. Rathbone lives in
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts with her two young children.
Deborah Small is the executive director of Break the Chains, an
organization that seeks to build a national movement within communities
of color against punitive drug policies. Before assuming her position at
Break the Chains, Ms. Small was Director of Public Policy for the Drug
Policy Alliance were she spoke regularly to the public and elected
officials, religious and community leaders, as well as parents about
issues relating to our government's failed drug policy. Prior, Ms. Small
was Legislative Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. She is a
native New Yorker and a graduate of the City College of New York and
Harvard Law School.
I had wanted to query the panelists as to how many of the women they encountered there were not guilty of direct criminal acts. As a legal philosopher I am well aware that innocent defendants in our system are all too often advised by harassed public advocate attorneys to plead guilty to 'lesser crimes' that they have not committed to avoid draconian prison sentences for those with which they have been charged. Also I became graphically aware while serving on a grand jury dealing mainly with drug prosecution that that drug enforcement in this country is mainly focused on poor urban communities (five of them in NYC) and is a 'game' for most participants which can murderously destroy the lives of some whose only crime is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, e.g. in a home of a drug dealer when a police bust occurs. Our jury met 3 such recent immigrants -- obedient wives (of Dominicans running 'kitchen" drug operations) with very young children -- who pled with us (unsuccessfully) not to indict so that they would not face being removed from their children for a mandatory minimum 15 years.
I did not try to ask this question as it quickly became obvious that those speaking during the question period were either experts in the field contributing insights, say as a prison chaplain, or themselves ex-cons -- in several cases both in one person.
What a horror. We now have 1/4 of the world's prison population in our U.S. jails 2.1 million and growing. Approximately 6 million Americans are one way or another entangled in or scarred by our brutal system of incarceration, including now nearly 1 million women!
May decent people work to end off these horrors and as one expert (who had also been incarcerated) suggested might we try to convert systems of 'punishment' to systems of 'correction' -- the misnomer applied to some of our most vicious prisons which now destroy thousands of persons each year.
I have edited out some of the particulars below of the invitation to this event now past. Ed Kent
Open Society Institute
A panel discussion featuring:
Cristina Rathbone, Investigative Journalist and Author
Eve Ensler, Author and Activist, V-Day, The Vagina Monologues
Vivian Nixon, Executive Director, College and Community
Fellowship, CUNY Graduate Center
Moderated by:
Deborah Small, Executive Director, Break the Chains
Cristina Rathbone spent five years visiting women prisoners at
MCI-Framingham outside of Boston. A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life
Behind Bars is a first-hand look at the prison and the women she came to
know there. The book also relates Rathbone's long legal struggle to gain
access to the women inside. Like most prisons in the U.S., the
Massachusetts Department of Correction has an elaborate system in place
to keep journalists at bay. A World Apart shows us why prison officials
are so eager to keep journalists out.
Women are the fastest growing group of people incarcerated in
the nation; over 950,000 women are currently under some form of
correctional supervision in the United States. A World Apart brings
attention to this ongoing crisis playing out across the United States.
Putting a human face to the statistics, Rathbone introduces us to
incarcerated women and their families, examining the devastating
consequences of mandatory minimum sentencing, and providing an
eye-witness account of prison conditions.
The panel will feature the following speakers:
Eve Ensler is the Obie-Award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues,
and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against
women and girls. She is the recipient of many awards, including a
Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Playwriting, the Berrilla-Kerr Award for
Playwriting, the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance,
and the 2002 Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award for Leadership.
She is Chair of the Women's Committee of PEN American Center and is an
Executive Producer of What I Want My Words to Do to You, a documentary
about the writing group she has led since 1998 at the Bedford Hills
Correctional Facility for Women. The film had its world premiere at the
2003 Sundance Film Festival where it received the "Freedom of
Expression" award and premiered nationally on PBS's "P.O.V." in December
2003.
Vivian Nixon is an ordained minister and executive director of
the College and Community Fellowship at the City University of New York,
which provides intensive academic support and public leadership
development for formerly incarcerated women. She also currently serves
as an associate minister at the Mt. Olive AME Church in Port Washington,
NY. In March 2004, Reverend Nixon received the Lifting as We Climb
Advocacy Award from the Correctional Association of New York. In January
2005, she was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship from the Open Society
Institute to launch Re-Enter-Grace, an advocacy and education project
aimed at religious leaders and their communities. She is currently
writing a book about her experiences entitled, Guilty and Saved:
Revelations of a Previously Incarcerated Preacher Woman.
Cristina Rathbone is a writer and investigative journalist, and
has written for numerous magazines and newspapers including the New York
Daily News, Latina Magazine, Out and the Miami Herald. Her last book, On
the Outside Looking In: A Year In An Inner City High School was a
finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, won the Delta Kappa Gamma
International Educators Award, and was selected as one of the best books
of the year by the New York Public Library. Ms. Rathbone lives in
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts with her two young children.
Deborah Small is the executive director of Break the Chains, an
organization that seeks to build a national movement within communities
of color against punitive drug policies. Before assuming her position at
Break the Chains, Ms. Small was Director of Public Policy for the Drug
Policy Alliance were she spoke regularly to the public and elected
officials, religious and community leaders, as well as parents about
issues relating to our government's failed drug policy. Prior, Ms. Small
was Legislative Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. She is a
native New Yorker and a graduate of the City College of New York and
Harvard Law School.
posted by Ed Kent at 5:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home