Theurbansource's Magazine

We sit in the bull pen. We are all black. All restless. And we are freezing. When we ask, the matron tells us that the heating system can’t be adjusted. All of us, with the exception of a women, tall and gaunt, who looks naked and ravished have refused the bologna sandwiches. The rest of us sit drinking bitter syrupy tea. The tall 40ish woman with sloping shoulders moves her head back and forth to the beat of a private tune while she takes small tentative bites out a bologna sandwich, someone ask her what she’s in for. she says; ‘They say I killed some nigga, but how could I when I’m buried down in South Carolina’ everybody’s face get busy exchanging looks. A short, stout young woman wearing men’s pants and men’s shoes says ‘Buried in South Carolina?’ ‘yeah’ says the tall woman ‘South Carolina, that’s where I’m buried you don’t know that?, you don’t know shit do you, this ain’t me…this ain’t me’ she kept repeating ‘this ain’t me’ until she had eaten all the bologna sandwiches, Then she brushed off the crumbs and withdrew, head moving again back into that world where only she could hear her private tune” – Assata Shakur (Women in Prison, how it is with us)

According to a recent Justice Department report on America’s jail population, the female inmate population has increased over 800%. Black women are incarcerated at 4 times the rate of White and Hispanic women.
African American women are more likely than women of other racial groups to commit non-violent offenses.
While Black men are labeled as violent “drug dealing gangsta’s” Black women are labeled as sexually loose, conniving, untrustworthy, welfare queens and many of the middle class judges and jurors believe that Black women offenders are menaces to society too.
Often times convicting them with higher sentences than White women for the same crime.
1 out of 3 crimes committed by Black women are drug related and harder punishments for crack cocaine use has played a major role in the Black woman’s conviction.
As of 2009 there were 115,779 Black women incarcerated in either state or federal prisons, when just a year earlier Black women only accounted for 33% of incarcerated women.
It was reported mid-term 2010 that 11% of African American children now has a mother incarcerated.
What is happening to the structure of our communities?
Thousands of children of incarcerated women are raised by grandparents or warehoused in foster homes and institutions and studies show that many children of imprisoned women drift into delinquency, gangs and drug use thus creating a perpetual cycle of imprisonment.
There is also a racial stereotyping, more that 1 out of 3 Black women jailed did not complete high school, were unemployed or they had income below the poverty level at the time of their arrest and more than half of them were single parents.

“Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty” – Angela Davis

In 2004 the National Institute of Corrections stated that only half of the state prison systems offer female specific services such as pap smears and mammograms.
70% of guards are male and records show that correctional officials have subjected female inmates to rape, other sexual assault, sexual extortion and groping during body searches, they watch these women undress, take showers and use the toilet.
Now, I am all for the old cliche’ “do the crime, do the time”
However, Black women in the penile system are often overshadowed by the exploitation of the countless Black men in prison.
The Black woman behind bars has had a devastating impact on families and the quality of life in man poor black communities.
In many cases they committed violence defending themselves against sexual or physical abuse, more women especially Black women are behind bars as much because of hard punishment rather than their actual crimes.
At a conference in April 2010 hosted by The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture the husband of a current inmate presented a paper on her behalf, the paper warns in part;
“There will exist in the prison system an element so brutalized, so abused, so embittered, so dehumanized and desensitized to the righteous struggle for the restoration and of the freedom and dignity of Black people, that if nothing is done to change it, it will come out to destroy everything that we have fought for”

~ by theurbansource on December 10, 2010.

Posted in Black America, black women
Tags: prison, Tina Clark