When I was arrested in 2010, I was shocked by so many things about jail - including how hard it was to be a woman behind bars. Toilet paper, bras, visiting children, periods - all the hurdles of being a women IRL were just magnified in jail & prison.
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And it was hard to get the tools to do better; almost all the programs were geared toward men. The men got four 12-step classes a week. The women got one. The men could be trusties. The women couldn’t.
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They weren’t necessarily intentional inequities - sometimes it was just about the numbers. There were so many more men, the system was geared toward them.
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In the county jail where I was housed, the cells had bars instead of doors, and the cell blocks had long windows running along the wall looking into the hallway.
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Passing by, you could see right into the cells. Every time we went to the bathroom or changed a tampon, any male guard or inmate walking by could stare right in and see us. It was a level of gender-specific humiliation I had not anticipated.
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I still feel a rising blush of shame when I think about it nine years later.
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Jail is not a great place to be, generally, but I quickly learned it’s specifically not a great place to be a woman. But some places that are trying to do better - it’s part of a growing interest in “gender-responsive corrections,” & that’s what I focused on in this story.
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The word gender responsivity was actually a term I hadn’t heard of until
@whitneyjoiner reached out and asked if I would write about it. It seemed intuitive to me - but I’d never heard the word for it.Prikaži ovu nit -
The idea is basically that if we pay more attention to women’s specific needs, and their specific traumas, we can get better outcomes and create less trauma.
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Women coming into prison have high rates of trauma & addiction - more so than their male counterparts. They’re more likely to be in for nonviolent crimes, and they’re more likely to be the primary caregiver for a child.pic.twitter.com/13o0fli9vp
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And that's not even touching on the lack of services for trans women, who have long faced an even broader set of problems - something I didn't touch on in this story, but ofc merits attn. (In general, follow
@lmcgaughy for good coverage on these issues.)https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018/05/15/after-texas-suit-trump-administration-reverses-prison-policies-protecting-transgender-inmates/ …Prikaži ovu nit -
These things - lack of services, basic supplies - all make a difference. Repeated strip searches or a shouting officer can have a very different impact on a woman with a history of sexual or physical abuse vs. someone w/out that history.
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Some jails are working to pay more attention to that - like Las Colinas, the women’s lock-up in San Diego. They’ve become a gold standard for gender responsivity, so in May I went there to learn more in person.
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It was not like anything I’d seen - it looked so much like a college campus, not a jail. There was yoga, vocational classes, college, an amphitheatre, a twice-weekly coffee cart. It was still jail - but it was a jail where everyone was trying to do better.
Brian Frankpic.twitter.com/iSuk1OnbjI
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Brian, btw, is also formerly incarcerated because - again - this entire magazine was written and photographed by people who did time. Let's pause to think about what a shift in thinking that represents. Can you imagine this 10 years ago? I can't.
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The other place I went for this story was Travis County Jail. There, they’re pushing to build a facility that would be a new standard for gender responsivity. It's gotten some local news coverage, but it's such an interesting story.https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2018-09-07/a-new-jail-for-travis-county/ …
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One of the main people I talked to about the Austin jail plans was
@laurenfreenow. She did time there years ago - while pregnant. But then got out and got her shit together, and now works for the ACLU. AND, she's on the committee involved in planning the new jail.Prikaži ovu nit -
For her - and some of the other formerly incarcerated committee members - planning a new jail was a struggle. They WANTED women to have better conditions and programs, but they didn't want to support building a jail.
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The plan - which is still moving forward - has sparked significant pushback from reformers, and is still controversial. (Follow
@texianna's coverage on this issue.)Prikaži ovu nit -
Writing this story meant so much to me. It is so wonderful to be able to amplify women’s voices and their needs - and it’s amazing to see a major outlet like
@wpmagazine not only paying attention, but valuing the work of formerly incarcerated folks in telling these stories.Prikaži ovu nit -
And, writing in this publication was particularly special to me because nine years ago, Washington Post - in its college blog or something - was one of the outlets that wrote about my arrest.
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I shared this fact with some of the women I saw in the Las Colinas jail in San Diego, as we talked about journalism and what it is that reporters do. It was a conversation that will stick with me:
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The women had already been told about me before I arrived. “Are you the lady who was here a long, long time ago?” one asked. I told them no, I did my time in New York. They had questions. How did I get clean? How did I get my job? What sorts of stories do I write?
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They didn’t ask about how I ended up in jail - we all understood the basics of that. They only asked about what I did after, how I put it back together. So I told them - I told them about dentures and planted evidence and books. Their eyes were wide.
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One of them told me, “You’re, like a voice for us.” Another looked at me and said, “There’s, like, hope.” And I basically melted.
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