As 2023 ends, where are the women? Increasingly, in prisons and jails and under attack

December 14, 2023 by Leave a Comment

A year ago, the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics released two reports, Jail Inmates in 2021 and Prisoners in 2021. From June 2020 to June 2021, the number of people held in jails rose 16%: “The number of males confined in local jails increased 15% from 2020 to 2021, while females increased 22%.” From June 2020 to June 2021, the number of people in prisons decreased by 1%: “The overall decline reflected a decrease in prison populations in 32 states that was offset by an increase in 17 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).” Where were the women in this modestly decreasing population? “Twenty-three states and the BOP each had more female prisoners at yearend 2021 than at yearend 2020. The number of females in the BOP prison population increased more than 7% (up almost 800) from yearend 2020 to yearend 2021 … The BOP had approximately 5% more sentenced females and 1% more sentenced males at yearend 2021 than at yearend 2020.”  Well, it’s a year later, at the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics released two reports, Jail Inmates in 2022 and Prisoners in 2022. Where are the women? Increasingly, in prisons and jails and under attack. Everywhere and nowhere, all at once.

Let’s begin with the Bureau’s prisoner summary: “In 2022, combined state and federal prisoner population increased for first time in almost a decade …. The number of females in state or federal prison increased almost 5% from yearend 2021 (83,700) to yearend 2022 (87,800).” Here’s the Bureau’s jail inmates summary: “Local jails held 4% more people in 2022 than in 2021 … From 2021 to 2022, the number of females in jail increased 9%, while the number of males increased 3%”

The overall prison population increased by 2%; the number of women increased by 5%. From 2021 to 2022, the number of females in jail increased 9%, while the number of males increased 3%. Why are women `winning’ the race to the bottom? Overwhelmingly they are convicted, or better condemned, for non-violent acts, mostly property or drug-related, mostly generated by poverty, drugs, or trauma. This is the second year in a row that women’s incarceration rate increases have exceeded those of men. What does that say? In October, in Uganda, the Commissioner General of Prison Service bemoaned the sorry state of women’s incarceration, noting, “We have a policy that all women are entitled to beds. We might not be meeting it but that is our policy.” We have a policy. We might not be meeting it but that is our policy. Unlike Uganda, the United States has a policy, which it is meeting. That policy is called witch hunt. For woman in distress, ailing, abused, in need of assistance, the place is a cage … with a bed … perhaps. We have a policy, and we are proud to say we are meeting it. What wonders will next year’s report reveal?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Images Credit: Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage / Aimee Wissman)

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Where are the women? In Ireland, and beyond, incarcerated and sleeping on the floor

April 16, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Dóchas Centre

Perhaps April is indeed the cruelest month, but when it comes to prison overcrowding, abuse, and general disregard for human dignity or life, it’s just another month. Take Ireland, for example. Reports started circulating at the beginning of the month that Irish prisons were dangerously overcrowded. On April 10, The Irish Times reported, “Fourfold increase in prisoners sleeping on floor as officials warn of safety risks in Mountjoy”.  Since the beginning of the year, the number of prisoners sleeping on the floor has increased by 400% … in a mere three months. The pandemic must be over, and this must be what `return to normal looks like’. The epicenter of this increase is Mountjoy Prison, which is at 110% capacity. In response, prison administrators are planning to buy bunk beds. That should take care of the problem, right? No. People sleeping on the floor presents a safety hazard to both incarcerated people and staff, according to an internal memo. But here’s the thing. This article is 20 short paragraphs long. It isn’t until the seventeenth and eighteenth paragraphs that the reader learns who exactly is being endangered: “Overcrowding is worse in the Dóchas Centre women’s prison which, with 172 prisoners, is operating at 118 per cent capacity. Limerick men’s prison, which was recently expanded, is at 130 per cent capacity (274 prisoners) while Limerick women’s prison is at 175 per cent (49 prisoners).” Where are the women? Sleeping on the floor and reduced to the margins of their own stories.

As of the most recent prison census, on April 13, Dóchas Centre, the women’s section of Mountjoy, remains at 118%. The Limerick women’s section is currently at 179%. Bunk beds won’t fix that, and everyone knows as much. Building more jails won’t address the situation either.

Chaplains who service Ireland’s prison release regular reports. The most recent one for Dóchas Centre, in 2020, reported, “Most recently a prisoner was remanded to the Dóchas Centre after having spent over a year in a psychiatric facility. The prisoner was clearly unwell and confused to the extent that after a few days in custody the prisoner wanted to know what hospital she was in. From as soon as she arrived in the Dóchas Centre the prisoner remained in bed all day. Prison was obviously not the place for that prisoner, yet the prisoner had been charged, arraigned in Court and remanded to prison. After considerable intervention by the Governor and Health Care Staff, the prisoner was removed back to the psychiatric facility that she had come from …. While Staff were dealing with this prisoner two other prisoners on the same landing were even more difficult to deal with: both were self-harming and both were violent. Both of the prisoners had been treated for mental illness before coming to prison. One of the prisoners had been brought to the Dochas Centre infected with Covid 19. The other prisoner was returned to the psychiatric facility where she had been a patient. That prisoner however was returned to the Dochas after she behaved in the same violent way that she had behaved in when she was being held in the Dochas previously. Obviously she had been referred to the psychiatric facility for specialist treatment. How was she expected to receive that treatment when she was returned to the Dochas? This is a clear example of the Dochas being used as a dumping ground.”

 “The Prison Service is too well aware of how prisons are constantly being used as the dumping ground for other agencies’ problems. Offenders whose offence is rooted in mental illness invariably get sent to prison because the State cannot accommodate them elsewhere. This imposes a duty of care on the Governor and his Staff which the normal exercise of their duty was not designed for. Prison Officers are not trained to handle psychiatric cases …. Covid has preoccupied all our thinking for almost a year. Hospitals filled to capacity are part of everyday discussion. At this time of terrible fear and anxiety in the community, no one is going to be surprised to hear that the Central Mental Hospital has no bed space available either. The difference however is that the CMH had no available space before the Covid 19 pandemic. Most prisons have prisoners suffering from mental illness who have been waiting for a bed in the CMH for over a year.” According to the Chaplain’s Report, the situation is “soul destroying. No one seems to care.”

The Chaplain concludes, “Government could find the resources to rescue the collapse of the banking system. Government could find the resources to pay workers to stay at home during the pandemic. Government could find the resources to protect the vulnerable from a life of addiction, homelessness and petty crime. Government instead sends the weakest and most vulnerable in society to prison at the cost of the taxpayer and the fabric of society.”

What has happened in the intervening three years? Women are no longer dumped into beds. Now, they’re dumped on the floor. Further, women have been even more deeply erased from the public record. They’re there, somewhere near the end of the rare account, as an afterthought. Where are the women? Dumped on the floor, dumped from their own stories. The Prison Service is too well aware …

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Irish Examiner)

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In (the news coverage of) Nigeria’s elections, where are the women?

February 26, 2023 by 2 Comments

#NigeriaDecides. For the last couple months, the hashtag has been everywhere. Well, if not everywhere, in many places. In a much-anticipated election, Nigeria voted yesterday, February 25, 2023, for President and members of the National Assembly. Leading up to vote, a number of news agencies ran articles with headlines like “What you need to know”, “What’s at stake”, “What to Know”, “what are the issues”, and the list goes on. While these articles focused on the youth vote, economic insecurity, military insecurity, they did not include any mention of gender, of women, despite that actually being a topic of more than passing interest among Nigerians, especially Nigerian women. So, where are the women in Nigeria’s elections? Sadly, severely underrepresented.

This year, one woman, Princess Chichi Ojei, of the Allied Peoples’ Movement, ran for President or for Vice-President. That’s out of 36 presidential candidates and running mates. In the last election, 2019, 28 of the 146 presidential candidates and running mates were women. From 2019 to 2023, then, the percentage of women among candidates for top positions has gone from 19.2% to 2.8%. Of the 1,100 candidates for Senate seats, 84 are women, or 7.6% of those running. As Africa Check noted, “Our factsheet on the status of women in Nigeria shows that since the country’s return to democracy in 1999, the share of women in the federal legislature has remained well under 10%. Sadly, this will not change in 2023.”

In Nigeria and across the continent, as people followed the lead-up to the elections, many asked, ”Where are the women?” For example, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia, and K.Y. Amoako, founder and President of the African Center for Economic Tranformation, wrote, “Women’s progress toward high leadership positions unfortunately leaves much to be desired. Since it gained independence in 1960, Nigeria has not had any women presidents or vice presidents. It has not elected any female governors across its 36 states. Its proportion of women representatives in both legislative chambers does not exceed 7%. The country’s national average of women’s political participation has remained around 6.7% in elective and appointive positions, far below the global average of 22.5%. In Nigeria, women and girls account for half of the population, and therefore represent half of its potential as an African nation. For Nigeria to prosper and progress, it must increase the representation of women in decision-making positions. Nigeria’s equity challenge did not arise because of a lack of leadership potential in its women. Nigerian women are a shining beacon of public leadership on the global stage.”

Nigerian women, individually and in organizational spaces, have been aware of and decried the current situation. In January, Chimamanda Adichie asked, “There is … something sad about the idea that we haven’t had a woman governor in this country. It’s wonderful that we are celebrating the possibility [of having one soon] but why has it taken so long?” Ayisha Osori, former candidate for National Assembly, noted, “Elections in Nigeria are monetised and transactional, and women are already socially disadvantaged considering that in Nigeria, the fastest way to be rich is to be in government. If women are not in politics then they cannot raise money and if they cannot raise money, then they cannot be in politics.” Mufuliat Fijabi, CEO of Gender and Election Watch, a Nigerian NGO, noted that this election is part of a trend, “If you look at the global average practices, we are not where we should be in terms of inclusion of women in leadership and decision-making positions. The number of female candidates in this election is 7.8 per cent which means it’s very few and if we are not careful, the number may decrease.”

Speaking of the National Assembly, the outgoing legislature has 469 members, of whom 21 are women. 4.4% of the legislature are women. That’s the legislature that in March 2022 rejected five gender bills that would have provided special seats for women at the National Assembly; allocated 35% of political position appointments to women; created 111 additional seats in the National Assembly and the state constituent assemblies; and committed to women having at least 10% of ministerial appointments. The Assembly rejected them all: “This is a tragedy for Nigerian women.”

Nigerian women have experienced both a gradual erosion of their position and progress in elected and appointed positions, as well as a more recent open backlash. At the same time, the international press, with the exception of Al Jazeera, has largely kept silent on the situation, despite claiming to offer necessary information about the Nigerian election. What you need; what’s at stake; what to know; what what what what what. What I know is where are the women in (the news coverage of) Nigeria’s elections?

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Infographic Credit: Al Jazeera)

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As 2022 ends, where are the women? Increasingly, in prisons and jails and under attack

December 21, 2022 by 8 Comments

In 2022, despite the obvious dangers of Covid transmission, jails and prisons around the world remained overcrowded. Despite decades of evidence-based research that demonstrates the negative health impact of overcrowding carceral institutions, despite volumes upon volumes of harrowing testimony, despite common sense and a sense of humanity, in 2022 jails and prisons around the world remained overcrowded. In Pakistan and India, women’s jails remained overcrowded, largely with women awaiting trial. The same held true in the United States, especially in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. There was much talk this year of “compassionate release” but in fact very little release or compassion. In a year in which the global prison population was at an all-time high, women were the fastest growing prison population, still and again.  That, in a nutshell, is 2022, but wait, there’s more. This week, the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics released two reports, Jail Inmates in 2021 and Prisoners in 2021. Where are the women? Yet again, increasingly in jails and prisons.

From June 2020 to June 2021, the number of people held in jails rose 16%: “The number of males confined in local jails increased 15% from 2020 to 2021, while females increased 22%.” From June 2019 to June 2020, the number of women confined in local jails decreased 37%. The decrease was a response to the Covid pandemic. What is the increase a response to?

From June 2020 to June 2021, the number of people in prisons decreased by 1%: “The overall decline reflected a decrease in prison populations in 32 states that was offset by an increase in 17 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).” Where are the women in this modestly decreasing population? “Twenty-three states and the BOP each had more female prisoners at yearend 2021 than at yearend 2020. The number of females in the BOP prison population increased more than 7% (up almost 800) from yearend 2020 to yearend 2021 … The BOP had approximately 5% more sentenced females and 1% more sentenced males at yearend 2021 than at yearend 2020.”

And who are the incarcerated women? “Among females of all ages at yearend 2021, those who were black (62 per 100,000) or Hispanic (49 per 100,000) were imprisoned at a higher rate than those who were white (38 per 100,000), despite the larger number of white females in the U.S. prison population … Female incarceration rates showed larger proportional differences by race at age 18 to 19 than for any age group. Among females ages 18 to 19, the 2021 imprisonment rates for those who were American Indian or Alaska Native (14 per 100,000) or black (13 per 100,000) were more than 6 times the rate for those who were white (2 per 100,000) … Sixty-four percent (6,300) of females in federal prison on September 30, 2021 were serving time for a drug offense.”

The story these numbers tell is interesting to the extent that we’ve been here before,  so many times. While there was a narrative circulating that the return to normal would hearken to our better angels, in fact, as with housing and eviction, the return to normal for women, especially for women of color, and most especially for young women of color, has been nothing short of catastrophic. That was 2020 to 2021, much of which was with Omicron raging across the country. And yet … And yet, the numbers of incarcerated women rose and rose.

Neal Marquez studies health care and infection in prisons and jails. Most recently he has published co-authored articles on racial and ethnic Inequalities n COVID-19 mortality in Texas prisons and life expectancy and COVID-19 in Florida state prisons. In Florida, Covid contributed to a 4-year reduction in life span of incarcerated people, and this happened in a single year. In Texas, Covid deaths were twice as high among Black and Latinx incarcerated people as among White. As Marquez noted this week, “It’s well-known that jails and prisons are at high risk of infectious disease spread, Marquez said, listing influenza, H1N1, and tuberculosis as examples of diseases that have spread quickly in prisons, with higher mortality compared with the general population.” Why do infectious diseases spread so quickly and with so much more deadly force? Overcrowding, limited access to health care, lack of appropriate equipment and staff figure prominently, prohibitively steep medical copays, and the fact that “people in prisons tend to have worse prevalence of long-standing health conditions than the general population”.

This week, it was reported that women lack basics in crisis-hit Lebanon’s crowded prisons; the `overcrowded’ Gorakhpur district jail, in northern India, is at 325% capacity; the United Kingdom’s “overflowing prisons put safety at risk”; and,  “due to overcrowding”, the Fulton County Jail, in Georgia, transferred incarcerated to women to the Atlanta City Jail, a move that has been “long talked about”. That’s the news this week … and it’s only Wednesday. Where are the women? In prisons, jails, immigrant detention centers and under attack. It may only be Wednesday for some, but for incarcerated women across the United States and around the world, it’s December.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Lauren Stumblingbear / Krannert Art Museum) (Infographic Credit: Penal Reform International)

 

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In India, women forest dwellers saved the trees, lost the woods, saved the woods, lost the forest

February 23, 2019 by 34 Comments

In 2006, India passed The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act, known as the Recognition of Forest Rights Act. While not perfect, the Act was a step in the right direction. It was “a weapon for democracy in the forest”, because, for the first time, the State recognized and secured community and individual rights over common property resources; rights in and over disputed land rights concerning land use; right to protect, regenerate or conserve or manage the forest; right to intellectual property and traditional knowledge related to biodiversity and cultural diversity; rights of displaced communities; and, finally, rights over developmental activities. That act came after decades of struggle by forest dependent communities. Women were at the core of those struggles. This week, with one court decision, millions of forest dependent communities, often called the most vulnerable of thevulnerable, were informed that they were to be evicted by July 24. It is estimated that as many as 2,300,000 families will ultimately be affected by this decision. Who are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable? Women and children.

From the moment its inception, the Act was challenged by mining, agricultural and so-called development interests. More recently, some conservationists argued that the forests were dwindling and that the forest dependent populations had to be moved to save the forests. In the case decided this week, the key was the provision of the act by which forest dependent families had to formally lay claim to land. This proved difficult given low levels of formal literacy and often impossible bureaucratic processes. For women, the issue of land titles was complicated by even lower levels of literacy and local traditions that precluded women having title to land. The State colluded with those local traditions. For example, many, if not most, forest households are women-led, because male partners have left, for work or just because, or have died. The State never addressed the particularities of women-headed forest households.

While the conditions for women forest dwellers have been particularly harsh, with increased industrial and State violence against forest-dependent women, women have consistently engaged in individual and collective direct action and mobilization for tribal rights and for tribal women’s rights. From Odisha to Chhattisgarhto Rajasthanand beyond, women self-organized to defend their commons. They carry the legacy of the women’s Chipko movement, from the 1970s in Uttarakhand. On March 25, 1974, Gaura Devi, the leader of the Chipko movement, led local women to confront logging companies about to chop down the trees. Calling the forest her mother’s home, Devi wrapped her body around the trees. The women persisted, and the loggers left. That was the early 1970s. In 2013, a reporter returned to the site and saw that the women had saved the trees … but lost the woods. Now only elders, women, and children live there, since the men have gone, either to find work or just because. Six years later … 

Forty five years, almost to the day, after Gaura Devi and the women of Reni village stood up for the dignity of Niluribhur forest, those women, their daughters and granddaughters have been informed they have five months to vacate. While the world press is paying some attention to this crisis, thus far almost none have noted, or wondered, “Where are the women?” 

Feminist activist scholar Swarna Rajagopalan has asked and answered: “What does it really mean to be an internally displaced person—or a refugee, for those who cross borders in flight? … As a woman, you did not get to go to school for long and you studied another language. How are you to navigate this state’s administrative offices and claim the paperwork, the food and medical assistance and other entitlements that are your due? You fled to survive, but now you have to fight to survive each day … As a woman, maybe stepping out of the house for the first to find employment, you can do domestic or care work. Sometimes you beg; sometimes you trade sexual favours to feed your family. Living on the margins, crowded by strangers, you are visible and vulnerable in so many ways—on the way to a communal toilet; to fetch water; to earn a living; and in your interactions with officials and house-owners. But disadvantaged as you are as a woman, you are not weak. You and your sisters asked questions, protested and stood your ground until the ground itself shifted. Now, after one… two… three displacements, the fight is going out of you …. Some women will miscarry en route; some will give birth in camps. Those children may grow up as ‘IDPs’ or ‘refugees,’ living in camps or IDP settlements all their lives. Small gardens will be planted, rangolis drawn, makeshift temples and churches set up. But they will always remember home. They were once from somewhere else—a lost forest home where they belonged and which truly belonged to them.”

Where are the forest dependent women in the Indian Supreme Court’s decision, in national and regional policies, in press accounts? Everywhere and nowhere. The Forest Dwellers Act recognized the rights of over 200 million individuals living in more than 170,000 villages. This week’s decision is a step in the removal of all 200 million. At every step of that plan and at every instance of resistance, ask, and demand to be answered, “Where are the women?” Everywhere and nowhere is not good enough.

(Photo Credit: Guardian / Anupam Nath / AP)

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National Women’s Day 2018: Where are the women prisoners?

August 10, 2018 by 1 Comment

Yesterday, August 9, across South Africa, people acknowledged, in various ways, National Women’s Day, the annual commemoration of the 1956 Women’s March on the Union Buildings, in Pretoria, to protest the pass laws and much, much more. On August 1, across South Africa, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of women and gender non-conforming people engaged in an “intersectional women’s march against gender based violence” and stayed away from all work and commerce. This was under the banner, #TotalShutdown. Organizers asked people to find ways of supporting those women who were forced to work that day. Additionally, for women in rural areas, where a march to a High Court might not be feasible, women were asked to `simply’ stand together, to unite and stay away from work and commerce. In between August 1 and August 9, on Sunday, August 5, Barbara Hogan, anti-apartheid activist and politician, returned to the Women’s Jail, now turned into a museum, on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg. Hogan remembered her stay in that prison from 1982 to 1983. On Women’s Day, in Women’s Month, and in the #TotalShutdown, where are the women prisoners? Where are South Africa’s women prisoners, generally, and where are they in the movements for women’s emancipation and power?

According to the most recent Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services Report, covering April 2015 to end of March 2016, South Africa has 236 operational prisons, of which 9 house women prisoners. Only 2.6 percent of prisoners are women. As Johann van der Westhuizen, the inspecting judge of Correctional Services, noted, this is “one of the lowest percentages in the world. Not bad for a population that is just more than half female. This means slightly more than 4 000 women are in jail — some with their babies.” Not bad? No. Johann van der Westhuizen continues, “Women’s prisons are also overcrowded. I was told that a cell for 25 with 37 inmates was not overcrowded. And that, in other instances, additional mattresses were put on the floor, almost doubling the number of inmates.”

The number of women in prison is low, and yet the women’s prisons are notoriously overcrowded. How can that be? Part of the answer appears in van der Westhuizen’s report, “Due to the high turnover rate of remand detainees, remand units were found to have deplorable health conditions and dilapidated infrastructure compared to those occupied by sentenced offenders.” Pollsmoor Remand was 251% overcrowded, and was “short” 2448 beds. According to the Department of Correctional Servicesmost recent annual report, 2012 to 2017, the number of male remand prisoners has declined fairly steadily, from 44,742 to 41, 397, while women’s numbers have risen, from 998 to 1,128.

What does that look like “on the ground”? For women prisoners, and especially for those awaiting trial, from overcrowding to access to healthcare to food to hygiene and sanitation to access to education, reading materials, decent work or any work, exercise and recreation, to contact with the outside world, the conditions are “horrifying.” At Pollsmoor, for example, more than half of the women prisoners are awaiting trial. Many wait years for a trial that is often thrown out or postponed indefinitely.

Reflecting on her experiences in prison, Barbara Hogan commented, “Prisoners do not need to be told that policeman beat up prisoners. They know it.” Last year, in August, the Women’s Jail opened a new exhibition, paintings from that jail by anti-apartheid activist Fatima Meer. The paintings’ very existence testifies to the myriad forms of women’s persistent, resistant and defiant organizing. At the same time, they speak to the ongoing squalor and dehumanization of women behind bars. The conditions of women prisoners, in particular women remand prisoners, is not an oversight. Those women have not been forgotten. They have been dumped, disposed of, and that’s public policy, not some accident. Prisoners do not need to be told that, but the public does. Someday, along with the Union Buildings and High Courts, women and their supporters will march to women’s prisons across the country to acknowledge, learn from, and build on the intersectional women’s organizing taking place each and every day among those women who are forced to sleep standing but never surrender.

(Paintings by Fatima Meer; Kajal Magazine)

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