Photo by Susan Madden Lankford
The reality of women’s prison’s is more frightening than Orange is the New Black, from abuse by guards, to losing children to giving birth while shackled to the bed.
1. The First Women’s Prisons
Women’s prisons are a relatively new concept. In the past, the rare female inmate was usually housed in a separate part of a men’s facility. The first federal prison for women was in Alderson, West Virginia, where it opened in1927. There was nonexistent security, and inmates were put to work with clerical, cooking and farming duties instead of being locked in cells 23 hours a day. Most of these women were not black widow murderesses, but girls who had fallen into drugs or alcohol during the Prohibition era.
2. The Exploding Incarceration Rate
The U.S. incarceration rate is something of an international joke–higher than that of any other nation in the world, including totalitarian regimes like Russia and China. Even among these astronomical numbers, the fastest-growing population of prisoners in the United States are women.
Women’s prisons didn’t even exist 140 years ago, but today there are over a million women in the criminal justice system. Between 1980 and 2006, the population of women in prison jumped 800 percent. The situation is even more grim for minorities, who comprise two–thirds of all incarcerated women. Tragically, most women behind bars have been convicted of nonviolent crimes like drug possession or prostitution, and even violent offenders have heartbreaking stories. For example, up to 90 percent of women convicted of murdering a man were abused by that man.
3. Giving Birth
In 30 US states, women can be shackled down while giving birth, a step that has been condemned by the ACLU and various health organizations. Amnesty International has called this a violation of human rights. Binding a woman during labor presents a host of unique problems for the mother, the child and the physician.
4. Displacing Families
Many women behind bars were primary caregivers for their children. When they are locked up, they are left with few options. The lucky kids can be placed with relatives, but more often, they are sent to foster care. Many of these kids are lost to their mothers forever. The 1997 federal Adoption and Safe Families Act requires states to terminate parental rights to children who spent at least 15 of 22 consecutive months in the foster care system, freeing them up for adoption. The median minimum sentence for incarcerated women is 36 months. Unfortunately, women’s facilities are often located so far away from home that it can be difficult or impossible for families to visit. Isolation from their loved ones usually harms prisoners’ attitudes or reintegration with society.
5. Death Row
Fewer than two percent of those on death row are women. In the last 200 years, the only woman sentenced to death for a lesser crime than murder was Ethel Rosenberg, who was questionably convicted of treason for providing the secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.
6. Healthcare
Prisons are woefully unprepared to attend to the unique health problems women face. Routine gynecological care and mammograms are often unavailable, so women behind bars frequently succumb to diseases like cervical cancer, which can be successfully treated in its earliest stages if detected by Pap smear.
There is a much greater incidence of substance abuse problems and communicable diseases like HIV and hepatitis C among women in prison than men, often due to a history of trading sex for drugs. Women are more susceptible to a number of chronic conditions such as varicose veins, constipation, anemia, urinary tract infections and migraines. They also outstrip incarcerated men in mental health issues, often from being the victims of lifelong abuse. Unfortunately, the vast majority of incarcerated women fall well below the poverty line, so even before they were imprisoned, they had little to no access to healthcare.
7. Assault and Abuse by Guards
Ideally the guards and support staff at women’s prisons would all be female. Unfortunately, approximately 40 percent of them in US women’s prisons are male. In some states, that number is even higher. So abuses like beatings and rape are terrifyingly common.
The most infamous institution is the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama. An investigation found that for decades more than one-third of its guards have had sex with inmates, often in exchange for basic commodities like cigarettes and toiletries. Although there are indications that Tutwiler is improving, it still is listed among the worst prisons in America. The federal government has stated that the circumstances there are so bad as to be unconstitutional.
8. ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK
The first two seasons of the outstanding Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black were a runaway success, and it been renewed for a third season. The story is based on the real life experiences of well-educated middle-class woman Piper Kerman who spent 13 months behind bars, starting in 2004, for laundering money for a West African drug kingpin. Her best-selling memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison was adapted into the Netflix series to great critical acclaim. One of the many compliments the show has garnered is that it features well-developed characters rather than the stereotypical criminals who often fill such portrayals of the prison system. Among them is a transgender woman named Sophia Burset, who is played by transgender actress Laverne Cox. Today Kernan is a frequent public speaker and nonprofit activist, serving on the board of the Women’s Prison Association.
9. Babes Behind Bars Exploitation Films
Before Orange Is the New Black, movies about women in prison were more along the lines of soft-core porn and often featured themes of lesbianism, nudity and cat-fighting. While such films hit their stride in the late 1960s, they date back to the release of 1931’s Ladies of the Big House. The genre, called “women in prison” or “WiP,” is popular in several countries, including Italy and China. Several cinema guides dedicated to the genre are available. Today, in the age of hardcore pornography, the WiP genre remains prolific.
10. Women’s Prisons Around the World
While women’s prisons in the Western world are very bad, the conditions of such facilities elsewhere are completely deplorable. South Africa has some of the worst women’s prisons on the planet, described by a former inspector as “shockingly inhumane.” Former prisoners have described scenes in which dozens of people are crammed into a cell with just one shower, sink and toilet, leading to outbreaks of violence that guards are unwilling or unable to control.
Even in Greece conditions can be nasty. At Thiva Women’s Prison north of Athens, vaginal and rectal canal searches are frequent, and those who refuse to submit to this demeaning procedure are put into solitary confinement and plied with laxatives until it can be determined they aren’t concealing anything. Although Greek prisons claim that such practices have been discontinued, they continue to be seen by visiting monitors from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture.
