WOMEN AND IMPRISONMENT IN THE U.S.
History and Current Reality, Part I
by Nancy Kurshan
As long as there has been crime and punishment, patriarchal and gender-based
realities and assumptions have been central determinants of the response
of society to women "offenders."
Here in the U.S. the witchcraft trials were a dramatic chapter in the social
control of women long before systematic imprisonment. Although the colonies
were settled relatively late in the history of European witch-hunts, they
proved fertile ground for this misogynist campaign. The context was a new
colonial society, changing and wrought with conflicts. There were arguments
within the ruling alliance, a costly war with the indigenous people led
by King Philip, and land disputes. In the face of social uncertainty, unrest,
and "uncivilized" Indians, the Puritans were determined to recreate
the Christian family way of life in the wilderness and reestablish the social
patterns of the homeland. The molding of the role of women was an essential
element in the defense of that project.
Hundreds were accused of witchcraft during the new England witchcraft trials
of the late 1600s, and at least 36 were executed. The primary determinant
of who was designated a witch was gender; overwhelmingly, it was women who
were the objects of witch fear. More women than men were charged with witchcraft,
and women were more likely to be convicted and executed. In fact, men who
confessed were likely to be scoffed at as liars. But age, too, was an important
factor. Women over forty were most likely to be accused of witchcraft and
to fare much worse than younger women when they were charged. Women over
sixty were especially at high risk. Women who were alone, not attached to
men as mothers, sisters, or wives, were also represented disproportionately
among the witches. Puritan society was very hierarchal, and the family was
an essential aspect of that hierarchy. According to Carol F. Karlsen (The
Devil in the Shape of a Woman, 1987), the Puritan definition of woman as
procreator and "helpmate" of man could not be ensured except through
force. Most of the witches had expressed dissatisfaction with their lot,
if only indirectly. Some were not sufficiently submissive in that they filed
petitions and court suits, and sometimes sought divorces. Others were midwives
and had influence over the well-being of others, often to the chagrin of
their male competitors, medical doctors. Still others exhibited a female
pride and assertiveness, refusing to defer to their male neighbors.
These early examples of the use of criminal charges in the social context
of women may be seen as precursors to the punitive institutions of the 1800s.
Up until this time there were few carceral institutions in society. However,
with the rise of capitalism and urbanization came the burgeoning of prisons
in the U.S.
The Emergence of Prisons for Women
The relatively few women who were im-prisoned at the beginning of the 19th
century were confined in separate quarters of men's prisons. Like the men,
women suffered from filthy conditions, overcrowding, and harsh treatment.
In 1838 in the New York City Jail (the "Tombs"), for instance,
there were 42 one-person cells for 70 women. In the 1920s at Auburn Penitentiary
in New York, there were no separate cells for the 25 or so women serving
sentences up to 14 years. They were all lodged together in a one-room attic,
the windows sealed to prevent communication with men.
Primary among additional negative aspects was sexual abuse, which was reportedly
a common occurrence. In 1826 Rachel Welch became pregnant while serving
in solitary confinement as a punishment and shortly after childbirth she
died as a result of flogging by a prison official. Such sexual abuse was
apparently so acceptable that the Indiana State Prison actually ran a prostitution
service for male guards, using female prisoners.
In addition, rather than spend the money to hire a matron, women were often
left completely on their own, vulnerable to attack by guards. Women had
less access to the physician and chaplain and did not go to workshops, mess
halls, or exercise yards as men did. Food and needlework were brought to
their quarters, and they remained in that area for the full term of their
sentence. Criminal conviction and imprisonment of women soared during and
after the Civil War. In the North, this is commonly attributed to a multitude
of factors, including men's absence during wartime, the rise of industrialization,
as well as the impact of the dominant sexual ideology of the 19th century
Victorianism. The double standard of Victorian morality supported the criminalization
of certain behaviors for women but not for men. In New York in the 1850s
and 1860s, female "crimes against persons" tripled while "crimes
against property" rose ten times faster than the male rate.
Black women and men have always been disproportionately incarcerated at
all times and places. This was true in the Northeast and Midwest prisons
before the Civil War. It was also true in the budding prison system in the
western states where blacks outstripped their very small percentage of the
population. The only exception was in the South where slavery, not imprisonment,
was the preferred form of control of Afroamerican people. If the South had
the lowest black imprisonment rate before the Civil War, this changed dramatically
for black women and men after the slaves were freed. After the Civil War,
as part of the reentrenchment of Euroamerican control and the continuing
subjugation of black people, the postwar southern states passed infamous
Jim Crow laws which made newly freed blacks vulnerable to incarceration
for the most minor crimes. For example, stealing a couple of chickens brought
3 to 10 years in North Carolina. It is fair to say that many blacks stepped
from slavery into imprisonment. As a result, southern prison populations
became predominately black overnight. Between 1874 and 1877, the black imprisonment
rate went up 300% in Mississippi and Georgia. In some states, previously
all-white prisons could not contain the influx of Afroamericans sentenced
to hard labor for petty offenses.
By mid-century there were enough women prisoners, both in the North and
South, to necessitate the emergence of separate women's quarters. This practical
necessity opened the door to changes in the nature of the imprisonment of
women. In 1869 Sarah Smith and Rhoda Coffin, two Indiana Quakers, led a
campaign to end the sexual abuse of women in that state's prison, and in
1874 the first completely separate women's prison was constructed. By 1940,
23 states had separate women's prisons. The literature refers to these separate
prisons for women as "independent" women's prisons, but they were
independent only in their physical construction. In every other way they
fostered all forms of dependency in the incarcerated women and were an integral
part of the prison system. The difference in the development of prisons
for women from those for men comes from the establishment of a bifurcated
system, the roots of which can be found in the patriarchal and white supremacist
aspects of life in the U.S. at the time. Understanding this bifurcation
is a step towards understanding the incarceration of women in the U.S.
On the one hand, there were custodial institutions which corresponded by
and large to men's prisons. The purpose of custodial prisons, as the name
implies, was to warehouse prisoners; there was no pretense of rehabilitation.
On the other hand, there were reformatories which, as the name implies,
were intended to be more benevolent institutions that "uplifted"
or "improved" the character of the women held there. These reformatories
had no male counterparts. Almost every state had a custodial woman's prison,
but in the Northeast and Midwest the majority of incarcerated women were
in reformatories. In the South, the few reformatories that existed were
exclusively white. However, these differences are not, in essence, geographical;
they are racial. The women in the custodial institutions were black, whether
in the North or the South, and had to undergo the most degrading conditions,
while it was mainly white women who were sent to the reformatories, institutions
which had the ostensible philosophy of benevolence and sisterly and therapeutic
ideals.
The Evolution of Separate
Custodial Prisons for Women
In the South after 1870, prison camps emerged as penal servitude and were
essentially substituted for slavery. The overwhelming majority of women
in the prison camps were black. The few white women there had been imprisoned
for much more serious offenses, yet experienced better conditions of confinement.
For instance, at Bowden Farm in Texas, the majority of women were black,
were there for property offenses, and worked in the field. The few white
women there had been convicted of homicide and served as domestics. As the
techniques of slavery were applied to the penal system, some states forced
women to work on the state-owned penal plantations but also leased women
to local farms, mines, and railroads. Treatment of the infamous chain gangs
was brutal and degrading. For example, women were whipped on the buttocks
in the presence of men. They were also forced to defecate right where they
worked, in front of men.
An 1880 census indicated that in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North
Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, 37% of the 220 black women were leased out,
whereas only 1 of the 40 white women was leased. Testimony in an 1870 Georgia
investigation revealed that in one instance "There were no white women
there. One started there, and I heard Mr. Alexander (the lessee) say he
turned her loose. He was talking to the guard; I was working in the cut.
He said his wife was a white woman, and he could not stand it to see a white
woman work in such places." Eventually, as central penitentiaries were
built or rebuilt, many women were shipped there from prison farms because
they were considered "dead hands" as compared with the men. At
first the most common form of female confinement was attachment to male
prisons; eventually independent women's prisons evolved out of these male
institutions. These separate women's prisons were established largely for
administrative convenience, not reform. Female matrons worked there, but
took their orders from men.
Like the prison camps, custodial women's prisons were overwhelmingly black,
regardless of their regionality. Although they have always been imprisoned
in smaller numbers than Afroamerican or Euroamerican men, black women often
constituted larger percentages within female prisons than black men did
within men's prisons. For instance, between 1797 and 1801, 44% of the women
sent to New York State Prisons were Afroamericans as compared to 24% of
the men. In the Tennessee State Prison in 1968, 100% of the women were black,
whereas only 60% of the men were black.
Women in custodial prisons were frequently convicted of felony charges,
most commonly for "crimes" against property, often petty theft.
Only about a third of female felons were serving time for violent crimes.
The rate for property crimes and violent crimes was much higher than at
the reformatories. On the other hand, there were relatively fewer women
incarcerated for public order offenses (fornication, adultery, drunkenness,
etc.) which were the most common in the reformatories. This was especially
true in the South where these so-called morality offenses by blacks were
generally ignored, and where authorities were reluctant to imprison white
women at all. Data from the Auburn, New York prison on homicide statistics
between 1909 and 1933 reveal the special nature of the women's "violent"
crimes. Most of the victims of murder by women were adult men. Of 149 victims,
two-thirds were male: 29% were husbands, 2% were lovers, and the rest were
listed as man or "boy" (there is a similar distribution today).
Another form of violent crime resulting in the imprisonment of women was
performing "illegal" abortions.
Tennessee Supreme Court records offer additional anecdotal information about
the nature of women's violent crimes. Eighteen-year-old Sally Griffin killed
her fifty-year-old husband after a fight in which, according to Sally, he
knocked her though a window, hit her with a hammer, and threatened to "knock
her brains out." A doctor testified that in previous months her husband
had seriously injured her ovaries when he knocked her out of bed because
she refused to have sex during her period. Sally's conviction stood because
an eyewitness said Sally hadn't been threatened with a hammer. A second,
similar case was also turned down for retrial. Southern states were especially
reluctant to send white women to prison; imprisonment was for homicide or
sometimes arson, almost never for larceny. In the Tennessee prison, many
of the black property offenders had committed less serious offenses than
the whites, although they were incarcerated in far greater numbers. Frances
Kellor, a renowned prison reformer, remarked that in this screening process
the black female offender "is first a Negro and then a woman in the
whites' estimation." A North Carolina report describes one institution
as being "so horrible that the judge refuses to send white women to
this jail, but Negro women are sometimes sent." Hundreds of such instances
combined to created institutions overwhelmingly made up of Afroamerican
women.
The conditions of these custodial prisons were horrendous, as they were
in prisons for men. The Southern prisons were by far the worst. They were
generally unsanitary, lacking adequate toilet and bathing facilities. Medical
attention was rarely available. Women were either left totally idle or forced
into hard labor. Women with mental problems were locked in solitary confinement
and ignored. But women suffered an additional oppression as well:
"The condition of the women prisoners is most deplorable. They are
usually placed in the oldest part of the prison structure. They are almost
always in the direct charge of men guards. They are treated and disciplined
as men are. In some of the prisons children are born . . . either from the
male prisoners or just 'others'. . . . One county warden told me in confidence,
'That I near kill that woman yesterday. . . .' One of the most reliable
women officials in the South told me that in her state at the State Farm
for Women the dining room contains a sweat box for women who are punished
by being locked up in a narrow place with insufficient room to sit down,
and near enough to the table so as to be able to smell the food. Over the
table there is an iron bar to which women are handcuffed when they are strapped."
--Estelle Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America,
1830-1930, 1987, p. 15.
Generally speaking, the higher the proportion of women of color in the prison
population, the worse the conditions. Therefore, it is not surprising that
the physical conditions of incarceration for women in the custodial prisons
were abysmal compared to the reformatories. Tellingly, even in mainly black
penal institutions, Euroamerican women were treated better than Afroamerican
women.
--Excerpted with permission from Women & Imprisonment in the United
States: History & Current Reality, by Nancy Kurshan, Monkeywrench Press,
4722 Baltimore Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19143
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