Women Of Color In Prison

Women of color’s health, as they enter the prison, is commonly impaired, and this impairment only increases as their time within the prison does because of its overcrowded conditions. These health issues become more severe in these environments as they are often rat infested, are scarce on water, are short on medical attendants, which ultimately, make emergency evacuations nearly impossible (Women Behind Bars). According to Stevenson’s firsthand account, “women had no privacy…there were dark corners and hallways-terrifying spaces at Tukwiler where women could be beaten or sexually assaulted” (238). Many of the women come into the prisons with communicable diseases like STDS, along with other health issues that only grow more severe, as “sick …show more content…
These prisons can provide women what the outside world, ran by dominant white society, denies them of or makes extremely difficult to attain. This includes employment opportunities, food security, and shelter, all obtainable “without a welfare or Medicaid card” (268). Because many incarcerated women are low income, single mothers, prison allows them to escape these heavily pressured and scrutinized roles. Prisons can provide low paying jobs that allows women to support solely themselves, rather than for others, like their children, partner, or other family members as they normally would outside of prison (Women Behind Bars). However, outside these walls, women will also face gendered and racialized low pay wages, while most jobs also refuse to hire convicted felons. Public assistance bans convicted felons, as well (Freudenberg 1898), which only makes their situations even less difficult to overcome, as “we’ve created a new class of ‘untouchables’ in American society, made up of our most vulnerable mothers and their children” (Stevenson 237.) Many of these women are also unskilled in the job field, but can attain job skills from prison jobs that are ran differently than outside employers, who are usually …show more content…
They are therefore, most likely to be convicted of felony offenses and serve longer sentences than white inmates because of institutionalized racism. This legality of injustice fails to recognize the detrimental learning, social, emotional, or mental effects that these women may already be suffering, or develop after long periods of time within these isolated systems that are predominantly more prejudice and violent towards non-white women (Women Behind Bars). History seems to repeat itself as the systematic murdering of black bodies, through what was once known as lynching, is now reoccurring through capital punishment. “All the defendants the Attorney General has approved for the death penalty have been African American,” showing just how anxious the state is to murder those of color (64). Their non-violent offenses that lead to long sentences in prison are because “women’s nonviolent crimes tended to reflect the limited economics of their lives” (Collins 102). The incarceration of these women of color has a tremendous impact not only on the individual themselves, but on their collective communities, their children, and the women of color in these communities. This is where “mothers, grandmothers, and community activists, women in low income communities of color bear the burden of