Powerless in Prison: Sexual Abuse Against Incarcerated Women

Powerless in Prison: Sexual Abuse Against Incarcerated Women
By Nicole Summer, RH Reality Check
Posted on January 15, 2008, Printed on January 23, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/73784/

"I am 7 months pregnant [and] I got pregnant here during a sexual assault. I have been sexually assaulted here numerous times! The jailers here are the ones doing it!"

-- excerpt from a letter from an inmate in a jail in Alabama to Stop Prisoner Rape.

Surviving a sexual assault and then navigating the health care system to receive adequate counseling and reproductive medical attention is daunting enough for those who walk freely on the outside. For women in prison, these hurdles can seem insurmountable. Unfortunately, sexual assault, particularly guard-on-prisoner sexual assault, is a fact of life for many incarcerated women, and the ensuing implications for their reproductive health are many.

The power dynamics in prison severely disadvantage the prisoner, who is at the absolute mercy of her guards and correctional officers, relying on them for necessities such as food and for the small privileges and luxuries such as cigarettes. Guards have unlimited access to prisoners and their living environment, including where they sleep and where they bathe. With such an imbalance of power, the likelihood of sexual assault increases. Sexual abuse in prison can range from forcible rape to the trading of sex for certain privileges. While the latter may seem consensual to some, the drastic power disparity makes the idea of "consent" almost laughable. In fact, all 50 states have laws that make any sexual contact between inmates and correctional officers illegal, "consensual" or not. "It's always unacceptable and illegal," says Lovisa Stannow, executive director of Stop Prisoner Rape.

While guard-on-prisoner sexual assault is common, putting a number on the instances is difficult because so many assaults are unreported. As with sexual assault on the outside, many survivors in prison are ashamed and embarrassed to come forward, fear that their claim will be hard to prove or fear that their attackers will retaliate. In prison the fear of retaliation is heightened, as the prisoner continues to live with her attacker controlling her daily life. And inmates who report a sexual assault are frequently put in segregated isolation, ostensibly to protect them from retaliation, but this isolation can be emotionally and physically draining, and well, terribly isolating. And many women in prison have been sexually abused in the past, before they were incarcerated, or are accustomed to using sex to get what they want, on the inside or the outside. "A lot of women don't view it as abuse," says Deborah Golden, staff attorney at the D.C. Prisoners' Project of the Washington Lawers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. About 80 percent of women inmates have already experienced some kind of sexual or physical abuse before prison, says Sarah From, director of public policy and communications at the Women's Prison Association.

Despite the widespread underreporting, some statistics exist. First, there are about 200,000 women incarcerated in the U.S. (in federal, state, local and immigration detention settings), a number that is growing exponentially and that makes up about 10 percent of the total prison population. Amnesty International reports that in 2004, a total of 2,298 allegations of staff sexual misconduct against both male and female inmates were made, and more than half of these cases involved women as victims, a much higher percentage than the 10 percent that women comprise of the total prison population. It can vary from institution to institution, but in the worst prison facilities, one in four female inmates are sexually abused in prison, says Stannow.

The risk of pregnancy as the result of a sexual assault is, of course, a concern for many survivors, incarcerated or not. But obtaining emergency contraception or an abortion, if one is desired, may be more difficult for women on the inside. Because many inmates do not report the sexual assault immediately (if at all), using emergency contraceptionis usually not possible, if it is even available. While prisoners' rights and reproductive rights organizations report hearing few complaints about emergency contraception being inaccessible to women in prison, they are unconvinced that it is widely available. Golden believes emergency contraception should be made readily available and should be on the prison's prescription formulary.

Unlike access to emergency contraception, access to abortion by inmates has seen its way through the courts. Crucially, women do not lose their right to decide to have an abortion just because they are in prison; rather, the issue is how the prison accommodates (or refuses to accommodate) her decision. "There are constitutional minimums," says Diana Kasdan, staff attorney with the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. Although the details can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, prisons must provide access to an abortion if one is desired. "Providing access" can range from providing transportation to an off-site medical facility, to allowing for a furlough or to providing abortions on-site, although Kasdan says she has not heard of the latter. A court in Arizona recently ruled that a court order to obtain transportation for an abortion cannot be required, and a federal court in Missouri ruled last year that a prison cannot refuse to pay for the transportation of inmates to receive abortions.

Paying for the abortion itself is yet another issue for women inmates, and it is a patchwork quilt of inconsistency throughout the states. Some state prison systems fund abortions, some states refuse to pay for what they consider "elective" abortions and some states simply have no official written policy, research by Rachel Roth has shown. Only two states specifically mention sexual assault in their prison abortion policies; both Minnesota and Wisconsin allow for government-subsidized abortions when the pregnancy results from a sexual assault. The federal Bureau of Prisons also pays for the abortion in the case of sexual assault.

In prison, the possibility of a coerced abortion can hang over an inmate who discovers she is pregnant as the result of a sexual assault by a guard. In a letter to Stop Prisoner Rape, one inmate writes:

A rumor had spread through the facility that I was pregnant. I'm not sure how the rumor got started, but medical staff came to my cell and forced me to provide a urine sample that they could use to test for pregnancy. They did not ask me any questions, offer me any support, or seem at all concerned for my well-being. That same night, three guards, two female and one male, came into my cell, sprayed me in the face with mace, handcuffed me behind my back, threw me down on the ground, and said, "We hear you are pregnant by one of ours and we're gonna make sure you abort." The two female guards began to kick me as the male guard stood watch. The beating lasted about a minute, but it felt like ten or more. Afterwards, the male officer uncuffed me and they left.

The prisoner's rights as a mother, if she becomes pregnant and chooses not to terminate the pregnancy, are complicated, to say the least. Few jurisdictions allow women to keep their children in prison with them once they are born. Frequently, if there is no family member on the outside to take the child, the child will enter the foster care system, and the state will move to terminate the parental rights of the mother because she is absent. The parental rights of mothers in prison is a fraught and complicated issue, one that goes well beyond the particular problem of sexual assault by guards.

Access to counseling after a sexual assault in prison is virtually nonexistent. An inmate cannot simply call a hotline, since all calls are monitored and she has no privacy. When one inmate sought mental health care from prison services after a sexual assault, she was offered sleeping pills, says Golden. "There's no capacity in prisons for talk therapy," she says. And any counseling inside the prison is not confidential. Some community therapists will come in on visiting days to counsel an inmate, but usually only at the behest of a lawyer, says Golden.

Despite the overwhelming power imbalance, guard-on-prisoner sexual assault is preventable, insists Stannow. Efforts such as making sure the staff is well trained, educating the prisoners about their rights, eliminating impunity for guards and following up on reports of sexual abuse would go a long way toward prevention, she says. Congress had similar goals in mind when it unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2003. PREA aims to establish zero-tolerance standards of sexual assaults, to increase data and information on the occurrence of prison sexual assault and to develop and implement national standards for the detection, prevention, reduction and punishment of prison sexual assault. "PREA has been enormously important in ending sexual violence in detention," said Stannow. "Congress made clear that it's a problem that must be addressed." Perhaps most excitingly, PREA created a federal commission to generate binding national standards regarding sexual violence in detention. But "the existence of the law doesn't mean the problem is gone," Stannow continues. "Now we need to make sure that we build on the momentum of the law to make every corrections system in the country acknowledge that sexual violence in detention is a major problem, and does everything it can to end it."

One of the largest obstacles to eliminating prison sexual assault is the "social invisibility" of prisons. The general public neither knows nor cares about the plight of the incarcerated, and thus cannot demand that its government properly protect prisoners' bodily integrity and rights. Perhaps PREA is the beginning of the end of this social invisibility.

Nicole Summer is a writer and lawyer living in New York City.

For Women Behind Bars, "Health Care" Can Be Deadly

For Women Behind Bars, "Health Care" Can Be Deadly
By Silja J.A. Talvi, Seal Press

Why a book about women in prison?

Readers of Women Behind Bars might ask the logical question of why an entire book should be focused on female incarceration while men are still, by far, the majority of people getting arrested and locked up. To many criminologists and writers who cover prison issues, the percentage of women in prison is so small as to warrant little, if any, attention or analysis. (Indeed, at many of the prison-related conferences that I have attended over the years, prisoners are referred to by the male pronoun almost exclusively.)

This question is entirely valid, and deserves a response. Men do face unique issues and hardships in prison, and the overrepresentation of men of color (especially African Americans), the mentally ill, and poor people in general has been more of an overall focus in my work than women's issues in prison until this point.

The deeper I began to delve into the underlying reasons for the rapid growth of girls and women in lock-up, the more insight I gained into a world that few outsiders see, much less understand. Once I began to pay particularly close attention to the ways in which females in the criminal justice system were portrayed in the media, it became clear to me that stereotypes and judgments about "fallen women" from centuries ago were still holding fast.

There's much more to all of this, of course, from the overt medical neglect of women's chronic health needs; to the prevalence of sexual coercion and abuse in women's detention facilities (primarily at the hands of correctional officers, as opposed to other inmates); to the fact that girls and women enter the criminal justice system with far higher rates of drug abuse, sexual violence, childhood abuse, mental illness, and experiences with homelessness. Women are also being punished heavily with undeserved federal "conspiracy charges" for their general unwillingness (or inability) to "snitch" on their loved ones or friends in drug cases -- to the point that this has began to be known as the "girlfriend problem" in the criminal justice system.

Today, the number of girls and women doing time is utterly unprecedented in U.S. history. In 1977, there were just slightly more than 11,000 women in state or federal prison. By 2004, the number of women in prisons had increased by a breathtaking 757 percent. At the end of 2006, there were 203,100 women in jails, state and federal prisons, plus another 1,094,000 women on probation or parole, for a total of 1.3 million females under some form of correctional supervision. (Another 15,000-20,000 girls are being held in juvenile detention.) While Euro-American women still outnumber any other demographic group in jails and prisons, African American women are four times more likely to be locked up than their Euro-American counterparts. (Collectively, African American women and Latinas represent more than 60 percent of women doing time.)

The following excerpt provides just one woman's story from Women Behind Bars. She did not live to tell it, but I am able to share it with you here.

****

I was already several months into the process of writing when I received an e-mail from a woman by the name of Grace Ortega. Grace had heard about the book project, and wanted to know if she could tell me what happened to her daughter, Gina Muniz, after she was incarcerated for the first (and last) time in her life. In truth, I already had enough women's stories to fill the pages of a few books -- if anything, I was overwhelmed trying to figure out which stories not to include -- but there was something about Grace's letter, the sheer urgency of it, that made me want to talk to her.

In our first conversation, Grace and I talked for two hours -- or, to be more precise, I listened for those two hours. It actually didn't click until a few days after that conversation that something sounded very familiar about what Grace had been telling me in great detail. Sure enough, I had once actually written about Gina, albeit briefly, in an article about the allegations and emerging evidence surrounding shoddy, abusive, and sometimes life-threatening medical "care" in two adjacent women's prisons: Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW) and the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla.

Grace and I stayed in touch, and I made it known that I would be interested in researching the details of her case for Women Behind Bars. I asked her to send me court documents, medical records, prison memos, grievances, or anything else she might have that would enable me to grasp the chronology of events in Gina's life, and to look more deeply into her situation. A few weeks later, a cardboard box the size of an orange crate arrived at my home. Grace had taken my request seriously and literally; from what I could tell, she had sent me absolutely everything she possessed pertaining to her daughter's case.

I didn't actually examine the contents of the box closely until I was already well into a few chapters of this book. When I did finally start to sort through the material, I saw that Grace had included four 8" x 11" color photos of her daughter. I set them down on my kitchen table and just stood there, staring at them. I don't know how much time passed, but I know it was long enough that the images were actually seared into my mind.

When I mentioned earlier that I was haunted by Gina's story, I meant that I have also been haunted by these images. For a time, I actually buried the photos under piles of paper in a strange attempt to block out my emotional reaction to them. It didn't matter; my mind couldn't erase any of it.

As I write this, these pictures are out of hiding, because I can finally give Gina's story a voice. The photograph that I have placed next to me is of her emaciated body, shackled to a bed in a community hospital near CCWF. Another of Gina's photos, which was taken just two months before her arrest on August 8, 1998, is on top of my desk. This is a snapshot of a naturally, strikingly beautiful woman with thick, dark curls framing her wide smile. Gina's warmth and kindness radiate from that picture, just as the one taken just a few weeks before her death conveys the agony of living in a body taken over by cervical cancer, which had started out as an entirely treatable, early-stage illness.

Gina's face in the hospital picture is that of a much, much older woman. The only parts of her that still look young are her hands and long fingers, which resemble a pianist's. Her left arm is shackled to the bed, per the requirement of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that even terminally ill prisoners be shackled to their beds and guarded twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Her right arm tenderly cups the head of her then-eight-year-old daughter, Amanda.

Her eyes give away the intensity of her suffering, which started out as horribly as it ended. When she was first taken to the LA County Jail, Gina began to bleed so profusely that she would go through many sanitary pads in the space of a few minutes; most of the time, she was just left to bleed all over herself and her cell. When her cries got loud enough, jail guards would typically come over and look at her with disgust, and then throw toilet paper rolls into her cell.

All of this went on until Gina passed out while talking to her mother on the phone after nearly eight months of nonstop bleeding in jail. Gina's collapse was apparently what it took for her pleas for medical assistance to be heard. Even then, it would be months before she was examined properly and diagnosed with Stage IIB cervical cancer, which has a high success rate of being treated and stopped in its tracks if it is treated aggressively and consistently.

Gina's pleas for justice, however, were not heeded. She received a life sentence in state prison, with an additional seven years tacked on. A life sentence would seem to indicate that she had committed a heinous crime, and most certainly a crime of violence. But Gina had actually committed a nonviolent act, although even she thought she should be punished for stealing $200 from a fifty-one-year- old Vietnamese American woman. Gina did not have a gun, knife, or any other weapon with her, but she admitted that she "strong-armed" the woman into going to a nearby ATM and giving her the money. Even the victim herself, when the police arrived on the scene, stated that Gina had not hurt her in any manner. Gina hadn't been a career criminal by any stretch of the imagination.

Her only violations were for car-related misdemeanors, including a June 30, 1998 charge for driving without a permit. (Gina did not do jail time, although the incident did go on her record.) What happened that pushed this twenty-seven-year-old, with no history of criminal behavior, to the point of rob- bing someone?

Grace explained to me that Gina's father's death on April 22, 1998, triggered a serious, debilitating spiral of depression in her daughter's life. Although Gina's father had periodically been a heavy cocaine and heroin user, and Grace had left him when Gina was just a child, Gina still adored him and tried to see him as much as possible.

By all accounts, cocaine hadn't even been a part of Gina's life until after her father died. Although she had gotten involved with men who hadn't exactly done right by her, Gina had set her sights on becoming a nurse and paving the way for a good life for Amanda.

Seeing her grief, a much older, married male family member offered his "support" to Gina, and then gave her a taste of a drug that he promised would help her get through the pain. His encouragement of her cocaine use was obviously far from being in Gina's best interest. When her use turned into dependency, he started demanding sexual favors, which she provided to him for a time in exchange for money to buy more drugs.

The "exchange" went on for a few months, until a day when she asked for $200 and this relative demanded another sexual favor. As Gina later admitted to her mother, she was suddenly consumed by hatred and disgust -- toward him and toward herself. She refused his advances, and he in turn refused the money. But Gina's desire for more cocaine overtook her ability to think clearly. As her mom put it, "Gina did something that she would have considered unthinkable" in the not-so-distant past.

A mere surface examination reveals that Gina's poor attempt at a crime was obviously a fumbling act of desperation by a woman addicted to drugs. But that's not how the court saw it. Gina's own defense attorney took Grace's hard-earned money (which he was eventually forced to return when Grace filed a complaint with the California Bar Association), did nothing to argue her case, and then urged Gina to plead guilty in exchange for a short sentence. While the judge was announcing the terms of her sentence, Gina heard the words "life" and "seven years," and anxiously asked her lawyer what was happening.

As a bailiff would later testify, Gina's lawyer had lied to her, telling her that entering a guilty plea would get her only a seven-year sentence, not life in prison. Gina did not find out until she was sent to CCWF that she was going to spend the rest of her life in prison. Medical "decisions" made at some level in the process ensured that she was denied the necessary hysterectomy, radiation, and chemotherapy that would have saved her life. In essence, her already cruel and unwarranted life sentence was hastened into a death sentence over just a few horrible months of pain and suffering, during which she and her mother pleaded constantly for medical intervention and urgent treatment.

It took many months of letter writing, and the volunteer assistance of the San Francisco-based advocacy group Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, for Grace to get her daughter out of a depressing community hospital room under the constant watch of prison guards. Gina wanted to die at home, and so she did. On September 29, 2000, Gina Muniz slipped away in silence, surrounded by her immediate family, just two days after her mother took her home.

Where is the healing or hope in a story like this? Gina was certainly not given the chance to experience either.

Instead, they have manifested themselves in Grace's ability to turn her own grief into advocacy on the part of other women in prison. Grace has traveled across California, testifying before legislators and advocating for compassionate release for terminally ill women in prison so that they do not have to endure anything akin to the needless and slow death that Gina suffered.

Grace still looks at the pictures of her daughter every day, and she worries that her daughter's life will be forgotten entirely or, worse yet, dismissed as the plight of a criminal whose life and death were of no particular significance. "Please," she asked me again at the end of our last conversation, "Please make sure that Gina isn't forgotten."

Silja J.A. Talvi is a senior editor at In These Times. Her work appears in the anthology, "Prison Nation" (Routledge, 2003).

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/66637/

First Shot: Thanks, But No Thanks

A women's jail is set to open? But do we really need it?
By Maureen Turner
Valley Advocate, September 6, 2007

After five years and more than $26 million-and despite countless protests and petition signatures-the new women's jail in Chicopee officially opens for business this month.

The minimum- and medium-security facility will house more than 200 women from the four western counties who've received sentences of less than 2 1/2 years.

Supporters applaud the fact that the jail will have the space and staff for programs-from parenting classes to addiction treatment and mental health services-that were hard to offer when women were housed in the already crammed men's prison in Ludlow.

Certainly, those kinds of services, if done right, could be a great benefit to the targeted women-but do they really need to be locked up before they get that support?

As Jo Comerford, formerly of the Western Massachusetts American Friends Service Committee, which has fought the creation of the jail, has put it, "A woman shouldn't have to get locked up to get healthcare, to get her addiction looked at, to get a GED. ... What I'm interested in is the root cause of what brought her to jail."

The majority of incarcerated women are there for non-violent offenses, namely, prostitution and drugs. Local prison officials acknowledge that about 85 percent of the women now at Ludlow have some kind of addiction problem. It's hard to believe that the social, economic and health problems behind their crimes couldn't be solved in a way that's healthier for the women and society, less damaging to their families and their post-incarceration lives, and less costly to taxpayers.

And when women are locked up, there's another group of people who are adversely affected: their kids. Across the country, there are 1.3 million kids whose mothers are under some form of "correctional supervision," according to journalist Christina Rathbone, author of A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars.

A 2003 study by UMass Boston found that there are 7,000 mothers, with a combined 16,000 children, incarcerated in Massachusetts. Often the children will be sent to stay with already overburdened family members or put into foster homes.

Of course, the building of the new jail profits some, including the contractors who took part in the pricey construction and the city of Chicopee, which sold the land for the jail for more than $1 million and receives another $100,000 for each bed at the site-meaning some sectors, at least, have plenty of motivation to back Hampden County Sheriff Mike Ashe's call to add another 56 beds to the jail. (For more on the true costs of prison projects, see www.realcostofprisons.org.)

Ashe's bid to add more cells to the jail means the fight's not over for activists like the Statewide Harm Reduction Coalition, or ShaRC (www.massdecarcerate.org), who've fought the facility. They're rallying behind proposed legislation, cosponsored by state Rep. Peter Kocot (D-Northampton), that would create a five-year moratorium on new jail and prison construction.

Instead, the bill calls for the creation of a special commission to study the "system of incarceration," looking at the unfair treatment of poor people and people of color, overcrowding, drug sentencing policies and the effect prison and jail spending has on anti-poverty and health programs. Ultimately, the commission would consider whether there are more effective and cost-efficient ways to deal with those who are now locked up, while also protecting public safety.

"What we need is drug treatment, childhood sexual abuse prevention, quality education and job training," Lois Ahrens, director of the Real Cost of Prisons Project, offered as testimony in support of the bill at a Statehouse hearing last spring. "These are long-term solutions; however, right now, we can alleviate jail overcrowding and the need for more and bigger jails though bail reform and pre-trial diversion programs and the diversion of resources from jails and prisons to drug treatment and meaningful job training."

-mturner@valleyadvocate.com
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=2875

What Else Can We Criminalize?

Join us on Thursday, September 13th at 12:30 pm. as we "celebrate" the opening of the Western Mass Women's Correctional Center, 701 Center St., Chicopee.

Free housing!
Free health care!
Educational opportunities!
(No child care, sorry.)

We want a jail in OUR neighborhood, too!
What a benefit to our local economy!
Chicopee gets $10,000 a bed ("read "woman") for the 200 prisoners.

The majority of women who will be prisoners in this new facility will be committed for drug and prostitution offenses.

What else can we criminalize?

Seriously, the U.S. currently has the largest documented prison population in the world, both in absolute and proportional terms. A record 7 million people -- one in every 32 U.S. adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of 2005.

For more information on the "celebration," how to participate and directions, call Holly at 348-8234 or Liz at 364-4834.

Online resource about women offenders

Its from the 2006 Scholar & Feminist Conference: Engendering Justice: Women, Prisons and Change. It contains transcripts as well as video clips and audio of some panel discussions. The address is http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/prison/index.htm.

CA-Justice Now-Stop Gender Responsive Prison Expansion

From: Susan Mortimer Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 4:05 PM
Subject: [MaSHaRC] CA-Justice Now-Stop Gender Responsive Prison Expansion

Justice Now's Vanessa Huang was in Boston (MIT) this spring to speak at a national women's conference. SHaRC members and one couragageous state representative attended her press briefing about women prisoners (and their allies) who call for an end to "gender responsive" women's 'correctional facilities' in California. More than 3,300 female prisoners signed a petition to oppose prison expansion and the co-optation of feminist language to make such facilities more palatable to "progressive legislators".

We in MA must hold our legislators and policy makers accountable, too. The use of code language such as "gender responsive" prisons, "helping women" and "parity" distracts from what is really being done to the powerless, invisible people locked away in the Commonwealth. Calling for women's facilities in every county is irresponsible, inequitable and inefficient. Funds must be allocated for healthy communities, schools, detox beds, treatment on demand - not ever more incarceration!

WE CAN LEARN ALOT FROM OUR SISTERS IN CALIFORNIA!

Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 17:32:54 -0700

From: "Vanessa Huang" <vanessa.y.huang@gmail.com>
Subject: [PRISONACT] calls needed to stop prison expansion in california! (forward widely)

*STOP PRISON EXPANSION!***

More than 3,300 people in California's women's prisons along with many organizations and advocates across the state together recently stripped Assembly Bill 76 of new prison construction via "Female Rehabilitative Community Correctional Centers" (FRCCCs). Some organizations removed our opposition to AB 76 after the bill's author took amendments removing provisions for prison expansion.

*However, AB 76's current language which doesn't allow for the repurposing or closing down of California's women's prisons without unprecedented legislative approval coupled with the Governor's budget provisions for an additional 4,500 prison beds in FRCCCs, ensures a back-door expansion of California's women's prison system.*

Proponents of the FRCCCs state their purported goal as "helping women," pointing to the CDCR's Family Foundations Program where women in prison live with their children and receive "services" as a model for their work.But the facts speak for themselves: Family Foundations recently came under investigation for patterns of abuse of babies and preschool-aged children resulting in a stillbirth, a child suffering a fractured skull, the wanton neglect of a child with brain cancer, and other lives put at risk.

Time and again, the CDCR has failed to provide effective services, and time and again, the resulting human rights abuses and gross medical neglect are uncovered.

*Instead of building more prisons dressed as "alternatives", we need to reduce the number of people in prison now through legislation like AB 1539 medical release for terminally ill and incapacitated people in prison* and to re-appropriate prison funds to support truly community-run programs that work with people returning home from prison. Funds earmarked for prison construction and operation should go into public resources distinct from the criminal legal system, such as women's health care, housing, education, job support and skill training.

*PLEASE CALL KEY CA DECISION MAKERS
*OPPOSE MORE PRISONS AND SUPPORT MEDICAL RELEASE!*

*Senate President Don Perata / 916-651-4009*

--I'm calling to urge the Senator to oppose AB 76 and "Female Rehabilitative Community Correctional Facilities," which would be extremely damaging to women. While AB 76 no longer contains the FRCCCs, the current language which doesn't allow for the repurposing or closing down of the women's prisons without unprecedented legislative approval coupled with the Governor's push for additional beds in FRCCCs, ensures a back-door expansion of the prison system. Previous facilities based upon this model have revealed extensive and severe patterns of abuse.

--I'm also calling to urge the Senator to support AB 1539, medical release for terminally ill and incapacitated people in prison. Rather than building more prisons, we need to reduce the number of people in prison, and AB 1539 presents the perfect opportunity.

*Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger / 916-445 2841 *

--I'm calling to urge the Governor to stop pushing for "Female Rehabilitative Community Correctional Facilities," which would be extremely damaging to women. Previous facilities based upon this model have revealed extensive and severe patterns of abuse.

--I'm also calling because I was encouraged by the Governor's remarks earlier this year suggesting he might support medical release for terminally ill and incapacitated people in prison. I urge him to sign AB 1539 into law.

Rather than building more prisons, we need to reduce the number of people in prison, and AB 1539 presents the perfect opportunity.

Vanessa Huang
Campaign Director
Justice Now
1322 Webster Street, Suite 210
Oakland, CA 94612
510 839 7654 x4#
510 839 7615 fax
vanessa@jnow.org

New NCCD Report on Women in the Justice System

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 21, 2007

Contact: Barry Krisberg
Phone: 510-208-0500 x311

New NCCD Fact Sheet Shows Disparate Treatment of Women among States:

The Nation's Most Punitive States for Women

A new Fact Sheet from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency shows enormous disparity in the way states treat women in trouble with the law. Using the latest available data from prisons, jails, probation, and parole for adult and juvenile women, this concise report shows how differently women are treated depending on the policies and practices of their state of residence.

The disparate incarceration, probation, and parole rates do not correspond to differences in state arrest rates. The most punitive states do not enjoy less crime. In addition the US imprisons more women and girls than any other nation. And within the US, women of color are disproportionately incarcerated compared to whites. Plus the proportion of incarcerated women to men is rising.

Some of the report's main findings are as follows:

· Based on 2005 rates of incarceration in state prison or jail, the most punitive US states for women were Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, Idaho, Georgia, and Wyoming. The states with the lowest rates of incarceration were Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.

· In a ranking of states by incarceration rates for women, the highest is Oklahoma at 1st; Texas is 3rd, Florida is 15th, California is 27th, Illinois is 43rd, and New York is 45th.

· Almost one-third of all female prisoners in the US were held in three states—California, Texas, and Florida. The states with the next largest female incarcerated population were Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. The states with the smallest female incarcerated population were Vermont, Rhode Island, North Dakota, and Maine.

· Based on 2003 rates of custody (detained or committed) per 100,000 females under 18 years of age in the general population, the most punitive US states for girls were Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Indiana, North Dakota, and Florida. The least punitive states were Vermont, Maryland, New Jersey, Maine, Illinois, and Rhode Island.

The imprisonment of women across the United States has repercussions in every aspect of society, including the huge costs of incarceration at the local and state levels, the splitting of communities and families, the tragic disruption at crucial developmental stages in the lives of thousands of children, and the unchecked deterioration of the physical and mental health of women in prison.

This report uses data from state and federal agencies—the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Corrections, US Census Bureau, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, among others.

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency, founded in 1907, is a nonprofit organization which promotes effective, humane, fair, and economically sound solutions to family, community, and justice problems. NCCD conducts research, promotes reform initiatives, and seeks to work with individuals, public and private organizations, and the media to prevent and reduce crime and delinquency.

Fact Sheet: http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/pubs/2007_MPS_factsheet.pdf

Globe article about Kelly Jo Griffen - Before inmate's death, a delay in care

See also SHaRC's web page for Kelly Jo, with the excellent, 2003 Phoenix article by Kristen Lombardi, our human rights violation report and Kelly Jo's family web page links. The Globe article below affirms what the family and allies have contended from the moment her death was known. What we were demanding at the time of her death is still relevant today. These demands are pasted below the article.

 

http://www.massdecarcerate.org/kellyjo.html

 

 

 

A small garden at the home of Karen Scovil in Malden memorializes her niece, Kelly Jo Griffen, 24, who died at the state prison in Framingham in July of 2003. (Aram Bogosian for the Boston Globe)

Before inmate's death, a delay in care

Framingham records examined

By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff  |  May 6, 2007

The state's official account of Kelly Jo Griffen's death, four years ago in a prison infirmary, describes a swift eight-minute decline, from the first warning sign to lifelessness.

But medical records obtained by the Globe indicate that the medical staff at MCI-Framingham was aware of Griffen's deteriorating condition much earlier that morning of July 23, 2003, and took no action to help her, as she battled the side effects of heroin and alcohol withdrawal. Two hours before a doctor started CPR, a nurse reported that she attempted three times to measure Griffen's blood pressure but could get no reading. She also was unable to detect a pulse.

According to the records, nurse Magdalena Grodzki told Griffen -- whom she described as alert, but shaking -- that a doctor would check her shortly, but there is no indication that he ever arrived.

Since Griffen's death, as she awaited arraignment on a minor drug charge, the system's healthcare provider has ordered staff training in detoxification. But the Department of Correction has never publicly disclosed what happened to the 24-year-old mother from Lynn or launch an investigation into who -- if anyone -- was responsible for her death.

In its only public statement, issued in October 2003, the state program that provides healthcare services in the prisons asserted that the medical staff "immediately provided all necessary care and treatment." In its mortality review, the department commended the staff for its quick response when Griffen stopped breathing.

"She never should have died," said her aunt, Karen Scovil of Malden, who is caring for Griffen's two daughters, ages 7 and 5. "If they had taken her to a hospital or given her fluids and just paid a little more attention to her, her two little kids would have their mom right now. Something is wrong here."

Griffen's death occurred a month before the prison murder of defrocked priest John Geoghan, and gained headlines only after his death raised questions about the safety of inmates in the state's prison system.

Despite a series of commissions and investigations, the Department of Correction remains in turmoil four years later, as it grapples with a high suicide rate and disclosures that inmates have been confined longer than their sentence allows.

The family has filed a wrongful death suit against Grodzki, Nicholas Rencricca, and Khalid Mohamed, the two doctors who were in charge of her care the morning she died. In the suit, lawyer Howard Friedman alleges that Griffen died of dehydration -- after being unable to keep down the medication she was given to calm her withdrawal symptoms. Over several hours, Friedman believes, the dehydration changed Griffen's blood chemistry and triggered a heart attack. A medical examiner's report the day after her death cited cardiac arrest and flu-like symptoms.

Nearly three months after her death, UMass Correctional Health -- a program run by the University of Massachusetts Medical School to provide medical services in the prisons -- said that "the immediate cause of her death remains unknown both to us and to the medical examiner."

Lawyers for the defendants declined to comment on the events that led to Griffen's death, as did officials from the Department of Correction and UMass Correctional Health, citing the pending lawsuit. Messages left at the home of the nurse and the offices of the two doctors also were not returned. They all still work in the prison system.

"Our sympathies go out to the family," said James Bello, who represents UMass Correctional Health and two of the defendants, Grodzki and Rencricca. "We continue to believe both nurse Grodzki and Dr. Rencricca acted appropriately in the care and treatment they provided. At the end of the day, if this case were to proceed to trial, we believe the jury would agree."

Mohamed's lawyer, Kurt Schmidt, also declined to comment.

But medical records turned over to her family by lawyers for the state, raise a series of new questions about her care. At 6:20 a.m., the records show, Rencricca's name appears on an order clearing Griffen for a court appearance that day. That was less than an hour after Grodzki was unable to read her blood pressure on three attempts or to find a pulse, and just an hour before she was found not breathing. But the records do not indicate that Rencricca actually saw her until he was summoned to resuscitate her at 7:30 a.m.

And while UMass Correctional Health's own rules, included among the litigation records, require that inmates be transferred to a community hospital if their condition deteriorates during detoxification, Griffen was left in the medical unit at MCI Framingham as her health declined.

In addition, a Globe review of records of the state's Board of Registration in Nursing show that Grodzki, the nurse who cared for Griffen during her final hours, had previously been disciplined for providing substandard care.

Grodzki was placed on probation by the nursing board for six months in 2001 after she gave the wrong medication to an 88-year-old patient at the Providence Extended Care Center in Worcester.

Grodzki was terminated, the nursing board records say, after she gave insulin instead of the blood thinner heparin to the patient, who became unresponsive. The patient was rushed to the emergency room, where he was stabilized.

Correctional Medical Services, which ran the prison health system until 2003, hired Grodzki after that episode. As part of the probation agreement, CMS was required to monitor Grodzki's performance and report back to the board. In December 2001 and March 2002, CMS reported that Grodzki was doing a good job.

Griffen's circuitous trip to Framingham began on Sunday, July 20, 2003, when she was spotted by Lynn police as she walked to the beach with her two girls and mother, according to details provided by the Essex Country district attorney's office, Griffen's aunt, and her lawyer. The police arrested her on an outstanding warrant charging her with leaving the scene of an accident and driving without a license. While at Lynn District Court on Monday, authorities discovered a second warrant -- alleging possession of a syringe -- issued in Salem. Griffen was taken to MCI Framingham for the night so she could be transported to Salem District Court for her arraignment the next morning.

But by the time she arrived at Framingham, Griffen, who also suffered from diabetes and a seizure disorder, was in the throes of withdrawal. According to medical records, she complained of nausea and shakes. The next day a doctor found her too sick to go to court, noting that she was "in severe withdrawal."

Throughout the day, according to the records, she reported feeling "so sick." At 1 a.m., less than seven hours before she died, she told Grodzki she was having a seizure. The nurse reported seeing her vomit. There is no sign in the medical records that a doctor saw Griffen at any time that night.

An inmate in the room with her said Griffen was "sick from the second she got there" and got worse fast.

"She was very, very pale and had to keep getting up to vomit," said Diane Solari, who was also detoxing from heroin. "They were giving her medication for vomiting and diarrhea but whatever she took she threw up immediately five minutes later. Soon she couldn't get up to go to the bathroom and was throwing up in a bucket. I'd empty it and she'd throw up again."

"She was so sick," said Solari, who shared a room with Griffen and two other inmates. "She was begging for an I.V. She must have said it 30 times."

Before sunrise, Solari said, Griffen became too weak to walk and fell on her face trying to get to the toilet. "She was drawn pale, gray. She couldn't stand up," Solari said." She could talk but her mouth was dry. I never saw anybody that sick."

Solari, by now in severe withdrawal herself, was laying on a bed waiting to take a shower. "Someone said, 'She's turning blue.' I looked and Kelly was bluish. I screamed Code 99," she said, the designation for a medical emergency.

At that point, she said, the medical staff "came running." They were not able to revive her.

Since Griffen's death, the Department of Correction and UMass have taken steps to improve the prison medical system, particularly for those detoxing from drug or alcohol addiction, according to inmates and lawyers familiar with the system.

"Until now the department's oversight of the medical providers has been little more than bean counting -- did they file their reports on time?" said Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, which represents prisoners. "But things are getting better. They've hired better doctors. We heard from prisoners at Framingham that there is a great doctor who spends a ton of time with each woman."

That provides some solace to Griffen's aunt, who has been clamoring for change since Griffen's death.

"People who have drug habits or mental issues, they don't belong in prisons," said Scovil. "They belong in rehab centers and hospitals. Major changes need to be made. I'm hoping Kelly Jo's death at least brings attention to that fact. Maybe they'll make the changes and save some lives. Too many people are dying." 

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

 

We Call For:

An independent outside investigation of Kelly Jo Griffen's death - to be followed by vigorous prosecution in the criminal and civil courts;

The DoC to provide all legally mandated medical services to prisoners and detainee's as required by the Community Standards statutes, subject to legal enforcement;

Medical staff to comply with standards of humane care of all prisoners as per United Nations Standard Minimum Rules of Treatment of Prisoners, of which the United States is a signatory;

The new provider of Massachusetts prison health care, University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center (UMMMC,) to be autonomous. All new medical staff to report directly to UMMMC. Remove former Correctional Medical Services (CMS) personnel now employed by UMMMC.

Clear demarcation between Department of Correction (DoC) and medical personnel including immediate and full accounting by all agencies involved. (The same officials who chose to not to renew CMS' contract kept all the direct providers in place thereby ensuring brutal medical conditions remain unchanged. Some of these folks are well connected to Sheriff Ashe's House of Correction and helping him to fulfill his dream of a high-tech lock-up for women. His associates claim they want to build the jail as a matter of fairness to women.)

We demand REAL PUBLIC SAFETY:

An independent Citizen Advisory Board to be implemented immediately;

That those involved in abuse and subsequent cover-up be terminated and prosecuted;

No new women's jail in Chicopee;

Drug treatment - not the War on Drugs;

An end to using  taxpayer monies to harm the community.

 

www.MassDecarcerate.org

info@MassDecarcerate.org

Stop Violence Against Indigenous Women

News Brief from www.FreePeltierNow.org
April 24, 2007

"Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA": A Summary of Amnesty International's Findings

Sexual violence against Indigenous women in the USA is widespread -- and especially brutal.  According to US government statistics, Native American and Alaska Native women are more than 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than other women in the USA.  Some Indigenous women interviewed by Amnesty International said they didn't know anyone in their community who had not experienced sexual violence.  Though rape is always an act of violence, there is evidence that Indigenous women are more like than other women to suffer additional violence at the hands of their attackers.  According to the US Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of the reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men.

Sexual violence against Indigenous women is the result of a number of factors including a history of widespread and egregious human rights violations against Indigenous peoples in the USA.  Indigenous women were raped by settlers and soldiers in many infamous episodes including during the Trail of Tears and the Long Walk.

Such attacks were not random or individual; they were tools of conquest and colonization.  The underlying attitudes towards Indigenous peoples that supported these human rights violations committed against them continue to be present in society and culture in the USA.  They contribute to the present high rates of sexual violence perpetrated against Indigenous women and help to shield their attackers from justice.

Treaties, the US Constitution and federal law affirm a unique political and legal relationship between federally recognized tribal nations and the federal government.  There are more than 550 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes in the USA. Federally recognized Indian tribes are sovereign under US law, with jurisdiction over their citizens and land and maintaining government to government relationships with each other and with the US federal government.  The federal government has a legal responsibility to ensure protection of the rights and wellbeing of Native American and Alaska Native peoples.  The federal government has a unique legal relationship to the tribal nations that includes a trust responsibility to assist tribal governments in safeguarding the lives of Indian women.

Tribal law enforcement agencies are chronically under-funded - federal and state governments provide significantly fewer resources for law enforcement on tribal land than are provided for comparable non-Native communities.  The lack of appropriate training in all police forces -- federal, state and tribal -- also undermines survivors' right to justice.  Many officers don't have the skills to ensure a full and accurate crime report.  Survivors of sexual violence are not guaranteed access to adequate and timely sexual assault forensic examinations which is caused in part by the federal government's severe under-funding of the Indian Health Service.

The Federal Government has also undermined the authority of tribal governments to respond to crimes committed on tribal land.  Women who come forward to report sexual violence are caught in a jurisdictional maze that federal, state and tribal police often cannot quickly sort out.  Three justice systems -- tribal, state and federal -- are potentially involved in responding to sexual violence against Indigenous women.  Three main factors determine which of these justice systems has authority to prosecute such crimes: - whether the victim is a member of a federally recognized tribe or not; - whether the accused is a member of a federally recognized tribe or not; and - whether the offence took place on tribal land or not.

The answers to these questions are often not self-evident and there can be significant delays while police, lawyers and courts establish who has jurisdiction over a particular crime.  The result can be such confusion and uncertainty that no one intervenes and survivors of sexual violence are denied access to justice.

Tribal prosecutors cannot prosecute crimes committed by non-Native perpetrators.  Tribal courts are also prohibited from passing custodial sentences that are in keeping with the seriousness of the crimes of rape or other forms of sexual violence.  The maximum prison sentence tribal courts can impose for crimes, including rape, is one year.  At the same time, the majority of rape cases on tribal lands that are referred to the federal courts are reportedly never brought to trial.

As a consequence Indigenous women are being denied justice. And the perpetrators are going unpunished.

In failing to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence, the USA is violating these women's human rights.  Indigenous women's organizations and tribal authorities have brought forward concrete proposals to help stop sexual violence against Indigenous women - but the federal government has failed to act.

Amnesty International is calling on the US government to take the first steps to end sexual violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women:

• Work in collaboration with American Indian and Alaska Native women to obtain a clear and accurate understanding about the prevalence and nature of sexual violence against Indigenous women;
• Ensure that American Indian and Alaska Native women have access to adequate and timely sexual assault forensic examinations without charge to the survivor;
• Provide resources to Indian tribes for additional criminal justice and victim services to respond to crimes of sexual violence against Native American and Alaska Native women.

TAKE ACTION:

http://www.amnestyusa.org/activism/campaigns.html

Click on "Stop Violence Against Women" and then scroll down to "Stop Violence Against Native American & Alaska Native Women in the US".

Chicopee Women's Jail Delay

CHICOPEE - The opening of the $26.1 million women's regional jail on Center Street, originally planned for this spring, will be delayed until late September.

http://www.masslive.com/springfield/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-1/117740677691960.xml&coll=1