[Ppnews] Title XV: The Conditions in Women’s Prisons by Sara Olson W94197

[PPnews at freedomarchives.org]

Title XV: The Conditions in Women’s Prisons

Sara Olson W94197

1/08/05

Title XV, the book of regulations that codifies the daily management of 
California prisons, must be changed to reflect gender differences. Women 
are not violent. Title XV must be made more gender specific. It’s currently 
written to apply to violent male prisoners.

When imprisoned, women tend to become depressed or to seek solace in a 
personal relationship with another prisoner. However, the California 
Department of Corrections (CDC) spreads the news that women are becoming 
more violent to justify increased imprisonment numbers and more onerous 
custody classifications.

Despite the fact that violent crime has decreased nationwide over the past 
decade to a 30-year low, the number of women in U. S. prisons had 
researched the highest amount ever by 2003; 100,000. In December 2004 the 
Little Hoover Commission, a state government oversight panel, released a 
study of California prisons and women prisoners. It came to the conclusion 
that California’s system spectacularly abuses women. The number of women in 
California’s state prisons has increased five times since the mid-1980’s.

Today in California, there are 22,000 women, inmates and parolees, whose 
convictions are for, on the whole, non-violent and drug-related crimes. 
Because of mandatory sentencing, predatory prosecutors, and a broken parole 
system that exists primarily as a prison reentry program, female convicts 
receive no rehabilitation or hope for a successful integration in to free 
society. Rather than address these problems, CDC policy is almost wholly 
punitive, introducing regulations that restrict personal property, access 
to programs of any kind and medical, dental or psychiatric care. Even the 
food is getting worse!

When a prisoner is released, she is barred from public housing and most 
welfare benefits. Ex-felons are barred for life from many well-paying jobs. 
Parole programs exist, in practice, for one goal: to violate parolees for 
any reason to keep prison population levels elevated to totals that earn 
state monies for the “corrections” system. Often, paroled women remain 
outside for only one day to a week before remand to prison. That’s not 
their failure. It’s systemic failure, but there’s no government oversight 
of these failed mechanisms. A bottomless public money pit finances these 
failures. Parole Department employees have no incentive to perform 
competently. In fact, success could lead to their redundancy.

The CDC is responsible for the wellbeing of prisoners. Instead, 
gender-blind rules apply in prisons full of generally low security risk 
women. Guards act as though they’re constantly in danger of attack from 
out-of-control inmates. At their training academy, prospective employees 
learn restraint techniques and methods for maintaining personal safety in 
the presence of menacing convicts. Then they come to women’s prison and 
hand out sanitary napkins or tampons and break up catfights between jealous 
girlfriends. They become lethargic. Those who don’t succumb to lethargy 
enforce petty rules that, if broken, can result in harsh punishment or even 
additional time. According to one old-timer, in CCWF’s fourteen-year 
history, no officer has been stabbed. Only four have been actually jumped 
and punched. There is no inmate-on-inmate murder, just death by suicide and 
medical neglect. But the guard’s union, the California Correctional Peace 
Officers Association, must push the violence quotient because it guarantees 
jobs.

At Central California Women’s Facility (C.C.W.F.) and its sister prison 
across the road, Valley State Prison for Women (V.S.P.W.) the only major 
non-gender blind policy is dorm housing. Men are housed two to a cell to 
prevent fights. Women are housed eight to a cell in a room originally 
designed for four people. Women who are mutually hostile, mentally ill or 
lifers and parole violators who approach prison with completely opposite 
attitudes are thrown together with no regard for compatibility. Elder abuse 
is rampant. The mentally ill are tossed into the mix while actively 
hallucinating. However, good behavior yields no rewards. In fact, bad 
behavior—“acting out”—often gets an inmate what she wants to simply shut 
her up.

There’s no Honor dorm. Lifers with good behavior records earn nothing for 
compliance. No rewards mean good behavior is obscured. Thus, no questions 
re asked about the efficacy of incarceration for inmates well beyond their 
first parole dates with two or more additional denials from the Board of 
Prison Terms. The upshot is total dehumanization.

C. C. W. F. opened in 1990. In 1996, CDC surrounded it with and electrified 
fence. Armed guard towers were added. Within this perimeter, all is secure 
yet the administration restricts inmates in Close Custody classifications 
even further. While Close Custody rules for women have always been in Title 
XV, they weren’t enforced until the mid-1990’s.

Gender specificity is particularly necessary as regards Close A/B Custody 
designations. CDC has begun to classify more women at the highest custody 
levels to justify increased population numbers and as an argument to 
reinforce our imaginary escalating violence. One can be classified Close 
Custody for length of sentence, the notoriety of one’s case, escape 
attempts, and several other reasons. Sleeping in someone else’s bunk can 
constitute an escape attempt. Close Custody achieves more staff positions 
to “guard” and “count” the “dangerous” criminals. It supports the fallacy 
that women are predators.

In reality, Close Custody prevents us from being allowed family or conjugal 
visits and transfers to prisons nearer to families. It creates a gulf 
between a prisoner and her children and loved ones. However, building the 
state’s two largest women’s prisons in an isolated little burg, Chowchilla, 
hundreds of miles from nowhere quite handily accomplishes that goal.

Women normally plea-bargain their cases. Even for violent crimes, we are 
usually sentenced as aiders and abettors. Because we are fallen women, our 
sentences tend to be longer than those for men convicted of the same 
crimes. When it comes to murder, women primarily kill abusers who have been 
torturing them for many years.

Public financing for women’s prisons is money misspent. There are 
alternatives to incarceration. Halfway houses and community-based programs 
that preserve family unity make more sense. They also operate at a far 
lower cost. Imprisoning parents tends to pass on a pattern of public 
institutionalization to the next generation. Children of imprisoned parents 
are five times more likely to become incarcerated themselves. Our children 
need us. Women need education, job training, abuse and drug counseling to 
help with parenting and childcare.

It’s time Californians began to monitor the overall social success story of 
the institutions that are bankrupting state-funded education, healthcare, 
and public works. What do they provide the state but increasingly 
insurmountable bills, a guard’s union with dictatorial influence over 
government spending and a reputation for one of the biggest, baddest prison 
systems in the world? A good place to start looking at reform is in the 
women’s prison system. Develop programs that place female lawbreakers in 
our communities where we can maintain strong ties with our families and our 
homes. Help us to learn to become assets to our society, not its outsiders.

Sara Olson

For more info on Sara Olson: 
<http://www.breakthechains.net>www.breakthechains.net and 
<http://www.abcf.net>www.abcf.net

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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