Inescapable Torture Behind Bars
A closer look into how the media has portrayed violence against female prisoners
It is often perceived that one of the main purposes of a prison is to rehabilitate the offender. This notion of rehabilitation has been a common “practice” when dealing with women in particular. Angela Davis touches on this point in her piece, “Public Imprisonment and Private Violence: Reflections on the Hidden Punishment of Women” as she mentions, “…it [prisons] were once regarded as a promise of enlightened moral restoration and thus, as a significant improvement over forms of punishment.” Davis also notes that this has simply not been the case. For many women, prison has not offered any forms of “rehabilitation”, in fact, prison has only served to punish and abuse women who have faced punishment and abuse in their domestic lives before entering prison. As Angela Davis mentions, “Sometimes, boundaries between private and public punishment [are] blurred.” Private punishment refers to “violence inflicted on women in domestic spaces” while public punishment is state or “corporal violence” inflicted on women within state institutions. Many incarcerated women are subject to a never ending cycle of punishment in both private and public realms.
1950’s movie Caged, and modern TV show, Orange is the New Black, do an excellent job depicting private and public punishment against incarcerated women. Both Caged and OITNB have showcase characters that have been abused prior to entering prison. For example, OITNB shows an inmate named Gloria and her son being abused by a boyfriend as part of her backstory. Gloria is seen with a black eye and running away from her boyfriend before she is detained. Sadly, this is not an uncommon scenario for many incarcerated women. Angela Davis noted, “…one of the salient themes in the current literature on women in prison is the centrality of physical abuse in the lives of women subject to state punishment.” We see the truth behind Davis’s words as the CSOSA’s statistics on women offenders reports that “the overwhelming majority of women in prison are survivors of domestic violence. Three-quarters have histories of severe physical abuse by an intimate partner during adulthood, and 82% suffered serious physical or sexual abuse as children.”
We also see in Caged and OITNB that some of the women are incarcerated for protecting themselves against their abusers or by committing crimes to try to escape their abusers. Caged in particular reveals that two inmates are imprisoned for killing their abusive husbands. A California State Prison study reported that “93% of women who killed their significant others had been abused by them” and a staggering “67% of these women indicated that the homicide occurred in an attempt to protect themselves or their children.” California state legislation, AB 799, was passed in 2006 which was aimed to help women arrested of domestic abuse get out of prison by challenging their convictions. However, it was proved to be fairly ineffective as it had certain limitations prohibiting women incarcerated after 1996 to obtain this help. Although attempts to find a solution to this injustice have been tried nationwide, many have proven to be unsuccessful because, as Davis points out, “domestic violence and women’s prison movements remain largely separate”.
“As the level of repression in women’s prisons increases and as the influence of domestic prison regimes recedes, sexual abuse — which, like domestic violence, is yet another dimension of the privatized punishment of women — has become an institutionalized component of punishment behind prison walls”. — Angela Davis
Sexual violence was a component mainly seen in OITNB. We see an inmate named Doggett, who had been raped prior to entering prison, being raped again by a guard; another inmate, Maritza, is verbally harassed in a car full of guards; and we also guards like Mendez demanding sexual favors in exchange for drugs or favors. In an attempt to rectify this, PREA was passed in 2003 to protect prisoners from rape or any form of sexual misconduct. Despite the attempt to put an end to sexual violence, Amnesty International reports that states offer little protection for female prisoners who become sexual targets for guards and even the states that do prohibit this activity usually fail to prosecute the guards. Shockingly, Colorado, Wyoming, and New Hampshire, can actually prosecute the women for having sex, even if the officer’s advances were unwanted. It’s clearly evident that female prisoners cannot escape this cycle of sexual assault committed by the state and domestic abusers.
I would also mention that physical and emotional abuse outside of the sexual realm has also been institutionalized into prisons. An interesting difference I noted within Caged and OITNB is that Caged had all female guards while OITNB had predominantly male guards. It was interesting to see that the guards in Caged seemed just as emotionally and physically abusive with the inmates as the males in OITNB. A female guard in Caged beat the women up, called them tramps and “animals”, and constantly taunted them with her freedom. The power dynamics that exist between inmates and guards prove to have the same effect towards guards regardless of gender. Another interesting thing about the guards in both Caged and OITNB is their constant yearning to have a more authoritative hand when it comes to the inmates. They constantly express a desire to beat the women for being “out of pocket” or sending them into isolation. Of course when no one is around, the guards usually exercise their sick desires.
Despite being decades apart, both Caged and OITNB show the extent of abuse women in prison face daily. Whether an inmate was sexually, physically, or mentally abused before entering prison, she must face the same dangers that led her to this state institution. Prisons do not offer “rehabilitation” to women, they offer a new or same type of punishment that most inmates face in their private lives. Its important to realize that this is not new concept. As Caged depicted, prisons have treated women terribly years ago under the guise of making inmates “worthwhile human beings.” OITNB reinstates that nothing has gotten better since.
The current prison system we have in place is horrific. It produces a never ending cycle of punishment and violence towards women who have faced this horrific abuse in the past. We need an actual prison reform movement for abused women. To combat this, I think it’s important to start merging domestic abuse movements with prison reform movements in order to give women in prison who have been abused a voice. By doing so, maybe we will be able to find more solutions to help the women who have been incarcerated for protecting themselves, help women who are being abused by guards, or even help generate support groups for inmates who have faced abuse in their past.
