Shedding light on the crisis of women behind bars
Confronting Confinement
The Women Behind Bars Project was inspired by author Silja J.A. Talvi's non-fiction book, Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System (Seal Press, an imprint of Perseus, 2007). This book is an in-depth work of immersion journalism that spanned two years of research and roughly a dozen detention facilities (local, state, federal, juvenile, international). Women Behind Bars incorporated Talvi's interviews with hundreds of current and former prisoners and correctional employees; investigative findings; as well as accessible statistical, literary, and pop culture analysis.
Inside American female detention centers, jails and prisons, Talvi found self-contained worlds that few outsiders ever think about, much less see for themselves. When most outsiders think of women in prison, they often conjure up images of sensationalized cinematic or televised portrayals of sexually depraved, violence-prone monsters, or else helpless victims who become easy prey. These kinds of images didn't go away with B-movies in the 1950s; some of these cartoonish or otherwise stereotypical representations are, once again, enjoying a resurgence on cable and network television. What really goes on in female detention centers is hardly as sensational, but it is worth paying attention to. Behind prison walls, Talvi unearthed an amazing range of women's life stories, survival strategies, and coping mechanisms--as well as commonplace violations of basic constitutional rights at the hands of corrupt prison personnel.
Talvi felt that it wasn't enough to write and publish the book: she wanted to keep the issue alive, talked about, debated, and acted on. Why? For one thing, the number of incarcerated females keeps rising, at double the growth rate of male prisoners. For another, girls and women released from detention almost never come out stronger, more confident, healthier, better educated or trained. Many women are released with no money or support whatsoever. Where do they go? Many head straight back into homelessness and hustling. Furthermore, many women lose custody of their children to the foster care system while they're in prison, and don't know how to go about getting their kids back. Broken lives, broken families, broken communities: it's a no-win situation all the way around.
Not Just a Number
Through the Women Behind Bars Project, we want to use the resources at our disposal (lectures, workshops, benefits, community events, and this website) to get across the message that society can't keep demonizing girls women caught up in the criminal justice system without understanding who they are. We can't keep pretending that the girls and women doing time have nothing to do with our lives--or even that they're that different from most of us. People who have been arrested or done jail/prison time are all around us. (In fact, you might be among the 1 in 30 Americans under correctional supervision at this very minute!) Girls and women who have done time are an integral part of our communities, and they need to be seen and heard. This is OUR collective issue.
To contact the Women Behind Bars Project, please send an email to womenbehindbars@gmail.com
Photo: Rita Alcantara
Community benefit event for Powerful Voices, a non-profit organization working with at-risk and in-detention girls in Seattle/King County. Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, Seattle, December 13, 2007.
Even the smallest donation makes a difference. The Women Behind Bars Project wants to respond promptly to requests for information, resources, books to prisoners, and speaking engagements. We're already doing a lot with very little, but we need your help.
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