Women Behind Bars: Her Story
Women are the fastest growing correctional population in the U.S. What do these women look like? 44% are black, 36% are white, 15% are Hispanic, and 5% represent other racial/ethnic backgrounds. 82% of these inmates are incarcerated for non-violent crimes (such as property, drug, and public order offenses), and 80% of these inmates are mothers, many of whom are single parents. 86% of them have experienced sexual violence; the majority of them have experienced severe trauma. This is our female correctional population.
Once in prison, women make up one-third of sexual abuse victims at the hands of prison staff -- even though they make up only 7% of the prison population. It is clear that before being incarcerated, many of these women were in difficult situations. Once incarcerated, life only gets worse for these women.
Many prison procedures dictating interactions between inmates and guards do not account for the trauma experienced by these women. Being subjected to full body contraband searches and forced to change, shower, and use the bathroom in front of male prison staff is traumatic in itself, and can be triggering for the many inmates who have experienced violence of any form.
The prison system was and is designed for the incarceration of men. Within prisons, risk assessment tools are used to determine how and where inmates will live. These tools were originally developed in order to assess risk for male inmates, and yet women are sorted using these same tools, regardless of research that shows that women are generally lower-risk than men. These biased metrics unnecessarily block some women from pretrial release, rehabilitation programming, vocational training, and educational opportunities. The women in our prison system should not be treated as more “dangerous” than they actually are. From hygiene product shortages to cuffing women in labor to their bed, the prison system cultivates trauma and dehumanizes female inmates to a degree beyond their male counterparts.
The following anecdotal story offers a glimpse into the horrors women face every day in prisons designed for and by men.
Sheila was incarcerated in a federal prison in Ohio, where she was a mother-like figure on her block. Being considerably older than the other women, she took care of the other women and witnessed the personal impact of Bureau of Prisons (BOP) policies on her friends. During her 10 years in prison, Sheila realized that the prison administration didn’t understand or care about critical female health concerns such as menstruation and childbirth.
The women in the prison where Sheila was incarcerated were limited to one pad a day while they were menstruating. This was simply not adequate for women with heavier flows. After the prison administration refused to change the system of distributing menstrual products, Sheila created her own system. She convinced the women assigned to hand out the pads to sneak an extra one or two in the laundry to Shelia, who would then give them to women with particularly heavy flows. This allowed them to get two pads a day, instead of one. The prison system considered tampons a luxury item and pads were limited to what was considered standard in the eyes of the prison, seemingly without consideration to the variety of health needs women have.
The prison was not only restrictive with hygiene products but also actively harmed women with regulations requiring them to be shackled to the bed while giving birth. During her incarceration, Sheila encountered and offered support to countless women who returned to prison after giving birth and having their babies removed from their care. They told her how they were cuffed to the bed, how the guards stared at them, and how days after becoming a mother, their babies were ripped away. These women's stories are made even more tragic by the fact that all of these practices are standard operating procedure in federal prisons. The women are shackled to beds because the BOP’s policy is to restrain all prisoners during all operations -- a system designed for men but applied to women. It is unreasonable to believe that a woman would attempt to escape while in labor, but the BOP refuses to change the policy.
The government must take steps to respond to the unique needs of women, who are the fastest growing group in prisons. Providing adequate tampons and ending rules on shackling women during labor are good starting points to address a system that ultimately requires a fundamentally new set of rules.