Results matching “prisons”

*Content is triggering*

This story speaks for itself. From the free Sara Kruzan action page at change.org:

"Life without parole means absolutely no opportunity for release," said Senator Yee. (of California) "It also means minors are often left without access to programs and rehabilitative services while in prison. This sentence was created for the worst of criminals that have no possibility of reform and it is not a humane way to handle children. While the crimes they committed caused undeniable suffering, these youth offenders are not the worst of the worst."

"As a society we've learned a lot since the time we started using life without parole for children," said Elizabeth Calvin, a children's rights advocate with Human Rights Watch. "We now know that this sentence provides no deterrent effect. While children who commit serious crimes should be held accountable, public safety can be protected without subjecting youth to the harshest prison sentence possible."

Watch. Listen. Weep. Take Action.

Also, read our previous coverage on prisons.

The topic of hate crimes has been in the news a lot lately with the movement of the Matthew Shepard Act through Congress and the trial and conviction of Lateisha Green's killer. Many may take it as a given that all members of the queer and trans communities support hate crime legislation and convictions. This is not the case, though. Myself and many other queer and trans organizers and activists oppose this approach to violence against our communities.

It is important to recognize violence motivated by bigotry, and difficult to see alternatives to hate crime convictions as a means to this end. A sense of justice for the family and friends of people who have been killed because of their sexuality or gender identity is also valuable. But the ultimate goal should be to end such violence. Harsher sentencing does not decrease the amount of hate crimes being committed. A focus on sentence enhancement for these crimes does nothing for prevention. Putting our energy toward promoting harsher sentencing takes it away from the more difficult and more important work of changing our culture so that no one wants to kill another person because of their perceived membership in a marginalized identity group.

Hate crimes legislation puts the power to bring and pursue such charges in the hands of a law enforcement and criminal justice system that disproportionately targets marginalized communities. As a result, hate crime charges are brought against black folks for allegedly targeting white folks and against queer folks for allegedly targeting straight folks. In fact, as the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) points out in their non-endorsement of GENDA, so called anti-white hate crimes constitute the second highest amount reported by the FBI. Self defense in the face of a racist, homophobic or transphobic attack can equal a harsher sentence for the person being attacked in the first place.

Incarceration is supposed to deter crime, and harsher sentencing for hate crimes is supposed to deter crime even more. However, this is not the reality. In fact, longer time spent in prison actually increases recidivism. Our current system of imprisonment is producing more violence, not less. Hate crime verdicts will only add to this sad reality.

States may find themselves losing money if they continue to let sexual assault in prison be swept under the rug, reports AP.

New standards are being proposed by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission to Attorney General Eric Holder on revising the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996, an act that has been problematic for survivors for a number of reasons, one being that prisoners are required to prove "physical injury" in order to file claims against prisons. (This allows courts to say that sexual assault by itself doesn't count as an injury.)

Holder has a year to write national standards. If states don't adopt them, they can lose 5% of federal prison grant money.

While folks are confident that states will sign on, some are worried that certain county prisons won't be able to afford to implement some programs that require extra funding, like hiring additional staff specialized in mental health treatment for rape survivors. But other steps to prevent sexual assault, like closer screening of inmates and staff and zero tolerance policies, can and should be taken - particularly when sexual assault is so often committed by prison guards.

Check out Just Detention, a organization that advocates for the rights of prisoners to be free from sexual assault, for more information on rape in prison.

Marilu Morales has filed a federal lawsuit after being allegedly shackled while giving birth at Cook County Jail in Chicago.

...Morales was eight months' pregnant when she was incarcerated in April 2008, according to the lawsuit. It could not be immediately determined on what charges Morales was being held.

When she went into labor three days later, she was taken to Stroger. A sheriff's deputy shackled a hand and foot to the hospital bed, the lawsuit alleged.

Morales was in labor for four hours before a physician ordered the deputy to remove the shackles shortly before she gave birth, the lawsuit said. The shackles were allegedly put back on immediately after the baby was born.

This is the fourth lawsuit that Flaxman has filed against Sheriff Tom Dart's office regarding a pregnant prisoner had been shackled while giving birth. Unbelievable.

Related posts: Judge jails HIV positive woman to "protect" her fetus
New report: Mothering in Prison
Woman gives birth in jail cell, alone
Bureau of Prisons bans shackling pregnant inmates
Critical Resistance: Prisons as a Tool of Reproductive Oppression

Last week, I wrote about Quinta Layin Tuleh - a 28 year old woman from Cameroon sentenced to 238 days in federal prison because she is HIV positive and pregnant.

Today, Margo Kaplan from the Center for HIV Law and Policy has a piece on RH Reality Check analyzing just how terrible the judge's decision was.

Judge Woodcock's decision ignores the complex factors involved in a pregnant woman's medical treatment decisions - as through being HIV positive makes one incapable of reasonable decision-making - and glibly equates being HIV-positive and pregnant with committing a crime. When reading the sentence, he makes clear that his sole reason for keeping Tuleh in prison was that she was HIV-positive and pregnant, and that, had she been pregnant and not HIV-positive, he would release her with time served. He reasons that he could keep Tuleh in jail "to protect the public from [her] further crimes."

...While some states do, indeed, criminalize HIV exposure, Judge Woodcock does more than this - he imprisons a woman for the mere possibility that she might transmit HIV in the future. His reasoning essentially criminalizes being HIV-positive and allows the state to jail anyone with HIV simply because they have HIV and are capable of transmitting it to another. It classifies anyone with HIV as a threat to society who can be incarcerated at the whim of the state to protect public health.

Make sure to check out the whole piece, Kaplan does a great job linking the paternalism, discrimination and misogyny that are so rife in this case.

From the Bangor Daily News:

A woman from the African nation of Cameroon could give birth in a federal prison because she is HIV-positive.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock last month sentenced Quinta Layin Tuleh, 28, to 238 days in federal prison for having fake documents. Woodcock said the sentence would ensure that Tuleh's baby, due Aug. 29, has a good chance of being born free of the AIDS virus.

"Judges cannot lock a woman up simply because she is sick and pregnant," said Zachary Heiden, legal director for the Maine Civil Liberties Union.

"Judges have enormous discretion in imposing sentences, and that is appropriate. But jailing someone is punishment -- it is depriving them of liberty. That deprivation has to be justified, and illness or pregnancy is not justification for imprisonment."

Yet that's exactly what Woodcock did - using the paternalistic justification that he is looking out for the best interest of Tuleh's unborn child, who he apparently thinks will benefit from the stellar prenatal care given in prison.

"My obligation is to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant," he said at Tuleh's sentencing, "and that public, it seems to me at this point, should likely include that child she's carrying. I don't think that the transfer of HIV to an unborn child is a crime technically under the law, but it is as direct and as likely as an ongoing assault.

"If I had -- if I were to know conclusively that upon release from imprisonment a defendant was going to assault another person," Woodcock said, "I would act in a fashion to prevent that, and similar to an assault, causing grievous injury to a wholly innocent person. And so I think I have the obligation to do what I can to protect that person, when that person is born, from permanent and ongoing harm."

I agree with Jess: I fail to see how Tuleh's inability (if that really is the case) to procure affordable, decent healthcare is an "assault" against her fetus, rather than the system's assault of Tuleh. And of course, one wonders if Woodcock's decision would have been the same had Tuleh been from Denmark or Italy, not Cameroon...though you don't have to wonder long. (70% of cases involving prosecuting pregnant women are brought against women of color.)

For more information on the U.S.' long history of persecuting pregnant women (and what you can do about it) check out the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Women and Prison project, and the Rebecca Project for Human Rights.

Related posts: New report: Mothering in Prison
Woman gives birth in jail cell, alone
Bureau of Prisons bans shackling pregnant inmates
Critical Resistance: Prisons as a Tool of Reproductive Oppression

The Women's Prison Association released a new report on Mother's Day, about incarcerated parenting mothers called Mothers, Infants and Imprisonment A National Look at Prison Nurseries and Community-Based Alternatives.
Since there is no standard policy for what happens when a woman gives birth while incarcerated, it analyzes the two options that are available now, prison nurseries that allow moms to keep their children with them for limited periods of time, and community-based programs that allow parents to fulfill their sentences in the community under supervision while parenting.

This is an increasingly important issue as incarceration rates, particularly for women, have grown immensely in the past decades. According to the report:

Between 1977 and 2007, the number of women in prison in the United States increased by 832 percent. 2 According to data released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in 2004 four percent of women in state prisons and three percent of women in federal prisons were pregnant at the time of admittance.3 In 1999, BJS reported that six percent of women in local jails were pregnant at the time of admittance.4 As the number of women in prison has skyrocketed over the past 30 years, states have had to consider what it means to lock up women, many of whom are pregnant or parenting.

There are important impacts on these families, particularly since the majority of these women are non-violent offenders who will eventually be released and be the primary caregivers to their kids.

The overwhelming majority of children born to incarcerated mothers are separated from their mothers immediately after birth and placed with relatives or into foster care. In a handful of states, women have other options: prison nurseries and community-based residential parenting programs.

Prison nursery programs allow a mother to parent her infant for a finite period of time within a special housing unit at the prison. Community-based residential parenting programs allow mothers to keep their infants with them while they fulfill their sentences in residential programs in the community.

Some of their research findings:

• The number of prison-based nursery programs is growing, but such programs are still rare. Only 9 states have these programs, and almost half were created in the last five years.


• Research shows that these programs benefit mothers and children. Women who participate show lower rates of recidivism (likelihood to commit a new crime), and their children show no adverse affects as a result of their participation. Improves maternal child bonding as well.


• Many women parenting their infants in prison nurseries could be doing so in the community instead. Women in both types of programs are serving relatively short sentences for non-violent offenses, and will continue primary caretaking responsibility for their child(ren) upon release. Most women in prison nursery programs present little risk to public safety. The issues that bring most women in contact with the criminal justice system - drug addiction, lack of education, poverty - are better addressed in a community setting than in prison.

You can read the full report here.

There was no question that the immigration detention facilities and policies in this country are dehumanizing, but the latest news out of Arizona underscores it. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) jail is being called out for human rights abuses against female detainees. From the Inter Press Agency:

MCSO is currently under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department over alleged abuses of a section of immigration law known as 287(g) that allows the federal government to deputize local police to enforce immigration law.

"The abuse of these powers within the jails is worse than in the street," said Salvador Reza, an organizer with the pro-immigrant group Puente that has been monitoring the alleged mistreatment. "If we were able to stop torture in Guantanamo Bay, we should be able to do that in Maricopa County," he added.

On May 2, Reza's group organized a six-mile march to protest this situation from the offices of the sheriff in downtown Phoenix to the Estrella jail, a detention facility for women.

The march was in response to claims of abuse by an immigrant woman whose arm was allegedly broken by sheriff's office guards, and a letter by 13 others who also denounced mistreatment within the same jail. At the protest, 43 women inmates launched a hunger strike to make their point.

"Please help us, we're in a tunnel without end, treated like dogs," reads the letter obtained by Respect/Respet, a local organization that documents human and civil rights abuses. Among the signatories is an immigrant woman who claims the sheriff's deputies broke her jaw during a workplace raid.

I've written about this issue in the past. Not only is this whole thing a gross violation of human rights and a moral black mark on us all, but there is a giant business behind it that few are aware of. While this is a government jail, many women are being detained in private prisons (the biggest being in Texas) that make big money off of imprisoning innocent immigrants (including children).

I'm so glad to see people protesting this issues and trying to organize others to join them. Check out Grassroots Leadership if you want to learn more, especially about family detention. Here's a video they made:

Thanks to the Women's Media Center for the heads up.

Go check out Courtney's newest column at the American Prospect about the need for female veterans who are sexual assault survivors and are suffering PTSD to be classified as disabled and eligible for services.

It makes a certain amount of sense that the Veterans Affairs Office is compelled to differentiate combat from non-combat veterans. Those who have been exposed to improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the stress of direct negotiation, and the trials of patrol on a daily basis certainly have a higher rate of PTSD and other disabilities following their tour than those who have not. But it's not a zero-sum game. When the sexual assault rates among female veterans are so astronomically high -- at least 30, and as high as 70 percent, according to Helen Benedict, author of the new book The Lonely Soldier -- the "combat" classification becomes a moot point. Keep in mind that sexual assault is a hugely underreported crime; even the Pentagon admits that only 10 to 20 percent of cases are probably being reported.

Add to this the reality that military culture is built on breaking down some of our most basic psychological instincts through humiliation, deprivation, and submission, and it becomes less and less logical to separate the soldiers who have seen combat from those who haven't. Everyone who signs his or her name on the dotted line of a military contract is destined for psychological trauma of one kind or another, especially if they're female.

I think this point of the culture of humiliation, deprivation and submission is not only a helpful frame in understanding the culture within the military, but also in thinking about the mindset that motivates the military to then create those types of conditions amongst the communities we are warring with be it via prisons or the use of rape as a weapon of war. It seems logical to us that a US military culture that demands a certain level of emasculation, would create, produce and sustain a culture of sexual violence.

Last Tuesday's post on the man in Oakland that killed 4 police officers yielded heated responses and I wanted to follow up after everyone (especially me) had some time to mull things over. I want to draw from some of the themes that came up and to update the news that broke last Tuesday night that Lovelle Mixon was also linked to the rape of a 12 year old girl. This act, along with the murders of John Hege, Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai, are reprehensible acts. I am stating this upfront so that it is not lost that this is a tragedy and there is no excuse for this kind of tragedy.

There seemed to be some concern that the way I approached my discussion of this topic made me sound like an apologist. Perhaps a matter of semantics but despite some folks understanding it was not my intention, there still seemed to be a need to accuse me of it. To clarify, there is a big difference between understanding what creates a condition/thought/action and then justifying that said action.

Thea Lim at Racialicious gave a very thorough breakdown of the fall-out around my post last week and the idea of trying to hold two thoughts at once. She writes,

Now, Mixon actually was guilty. But Mixon's guilt doesn't neutralise the rottenness of the system. In other words, just because Mixon was actually a dangerous felon doesn't mean that we are absolved from the duty to question how justice and innocence is defined and meted out in our culture.

It is not only possible for us to hold these two facts at once, but it is imperative in understanding the consequences of Mixon's actions for the greater community in Oakland and also for understanding how the youth in Oakland are dealing with this atrocity. Perhaps the huge backlash against my piece was due to a desire to use Mixon as an excuse to voice their own racism, whether conscious or subconscious. As lefties it is our job to point out these subtle nuances, as the implications are deadly.

With regard to the poster I chose to repost here, after posting the artist's statement and some conversation via comments and emails, I would just like to clarify why I thought it was powerful. I should have known that putting it up would make me look like I was complicit in making Mixon a poster-child, but the poster says, "Cop-Killer" not "American Hero" so I thought that the fact that I didn't think he was a hero was pretty self-explanatory. What I saw in that poster was several questions come up about what we need to be American. We need our villains, we need our heroes or the story is never complete. In short, people of color become the poster children for whatever we want them to be, Obama is on one side of the American dream, Mixon on the other. Also, while I don't totally agree with all of Weston's take, the one part I do agree with is that Mixon is a product of a culture of violence in America and we can either address that or we can write this off as a one off crazy man.

It is understandable why many different people are bound to the 'one off' point of view. It makes us feel comfortable to think that someone like Mixon is a 'one off' case because it takes responsibility off of us to look at, and, ultimately, change the systemic causes of violence. On the other hand, the belief that he is not a 'one off' incident will most definitely be used to justify further violence in the black community in Oakland and that is what we are afraid of. It is almost effective and more logical for those that live in the community to write this off as an aberration (which statistically it is) as opposed to part of a systemic problem.

But this story is not just about Mixon and his inability to get out of cycles of violence. This is about all the themes and ideas that have come out around Mixon and what that tells us about public perceptions of police brutality, black masculinity and why Oakland youth might be so juiced about this issue. As Puck clarified at the end of the comments section,

Regardless of whether or not she believes cop killing is a message of hope (and it's pretty clear that she doesn't), it's important to recognize that an image like the "poster" was created in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. It's important to recognize that there are a lot of people who see this as a tit-for-tat situation... and there are a lot of people who are conflicted - at once feeling sorry for the people who were killed (and their families) and simultaneously feeling like the system had it coming. Recognizing that these are perspectives that are very real and shared by a lot of people is not the same thing as holding such a perspective. Ignoring that such perspectives are worth considering or even exist stifles our capacity to understand all the angles on a tragedy such as this.

Mixon is a difficult person to build a narrative of police brutality around, but this story isn't about him. He is dead, he can do no more harm. But the police state can, and most likely will, use this case as an excuse to continually police and brutalize people of color in Oakland. Mixon was a very extreme example of violence, but he is still part of an entire system of violence. The more we have a repressive police system that engages in extreme forms of violence, the more people will support the actions of a cop-killer. Some have suggested that if perhaps Oakland police and stood up against what happened to Oscar Grant, Oakland youth would be singing a different tune right now.

The Audre Lorde Project, an amazing organization for LGBTQ People of Color, put out this statement on the morning of President Obama's inauguration. An excerpt from A Different Kind of Morning:

We noticed that we were juggling multiple emotions - amazement, fear, skepticism, visions of a different future, and anxiety. We know that President Obama will inherit impossible expectations, the worst conditions that the U.S. has dealt with since the Great Depression, and the current versions of white supremacy which have never gone away. We also know that Obama ran as a centrist, and as someone who believes in neoliberal economic strategies.

As a result, we write this statement as a commitment to not be paralyzed by disappointment and disillusionment, but to organize more strongly, deeply, and strategically from this day on. We acknowledge that this statement strays from the traditional policy agenda of the LGBT movement in the U.S., and that is because Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Trans and Gender Non Conforming (LGBTSTGNC) People of Color are everywhere - in refugee settlements and prisons, in factories and board rooms, in the service sector and the unemployment line, the picket line and protests in the streets. We are putting this out as in invitation to move forward on the lessons of the election, to continue to build local community spaces and transnational movements powered by the energy of many more people than we have seen before.

Read the whole piece here.

There are many frightening propositions on the CA ballot that we have covered , specifically prop 8 and prop 4. We already know how you are voting on them. Instead of give a full voter guide, which Ann did already, I want to just shed some light on a proposition that will truly harm the young people of California and is a racist and seriously detrimental piece of legislation, CA Proposition 6.

Proposition 6 Facts

"Worst of the Worst"

1) Drops the age to 14 that a child can be tried as an adult

2) California already spends four times as much $ per prisoner as it does per public school student, prop 6 moves millions of $ away from schools and into prisons

3) Creates over 50 changes in law with redundant spending and duplicated bureaucracy

4) Explicitly removes community representatives from juvenile justice coordinating councils so affected communities have no ability to bring a voice to the table

5) Mandates yearly criminal background checks on everyone living in Section 8 public housing and removes the 30 day eviction notice requirement, destabilizing communities through forced evictions

Prisons are a feminist issue as we have written about before. Please vote no on prop 6! Go here for more info.

Some good news for your mid-week: The Bureau of Prisons recently announced it has changed its policy and now bans the shackling of pregnant women during transportation, labor and delivery.

Maria Jones, who was incarcerated for violating drug laws, tells the story of having labor induced two weeks prior to her due date, but being "kept in shackles, leaving 18 inches between her ankles, and told to pace the hallway for several hours. 'It was so humiliating. My ankles were raw,' she said. 'I had shackles on up until the baby was coming out and then they took them off for me to push...It was unbelievable. Like I was going to go anywhere.'"

[...]The new policy represents a huge victory for the thousands of women incarcerated in federal prisons throughout the country -- a victory hard won by groups like The Rebecca Project for Human Rights and other organizations that have advocated for this change.

But this is only the beginning. In 47 states there is no legislation to restrict the practice of shackling pregnant women; state and local prisons are not subject to the new federal policy. And the U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which increasingly detains immigrant women who have never committed a crime, has refused to specifically end the use of restraints on pregnant women.

So basically, it's a good start, but we need to keep advocating that state and local prisons, as well as ICE, also ban the practice of shackling pregnant women. As the ACLU notes, women are the fastest-growing segment of the prison population. This issue is not going away anytime soon.

Amnesty International has info on the situation at the state-level.

Texas Prison Bid'ness

Started in 2007, when two bills were introduced, one that increased capacity in private prisons in TX and another that would have rolled back tons of standards that were achieved under a previous lawsuit from the 80s. The first passed, the second did not.

The blog was created to have a resource about private prisons in TX for legislators, activists, etc. TX was the birthplace of private prisons in the USA. Highlighting the abuses that were going on in private prisons (deaths, sexual assaults, guard abuse).

Two other criminal justice blogs:

Grits for breakfast--daily criminal justice blogging in TX

Think Outside the Cage---Colorado criminal justice reform blog

Kenyon Farrow

Wrote a piece in 2004 pitched to an indie paper critiquing gay marriage, called Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black? It was censored by that paper, and then it took on a life of its own, after which he began his blog.

Other criminal justice/PIC blogs:
T Don Hutto

In May 2006, the Department of Homeland Security opened its first prison for immigrant families 30 miles north of Austin. It is the first family detention center in the country to be based on the penal model, though plans were quickly made to build more.

The T Don Hutto facility holds men, women (some pregnant), children, and infants, none of whom have a criminal past. Administered by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country's largest for-profit corrections company, Hutto lacks proper licensing and medical facilities, and has been proven to traumatize families.

This blog is dedicated to providing information on the growing movement to shut down Hutto and prevent this model of immigrant detention from spreading nationally.

Prisons as a Tool of Reproductive Oppression: Cross Movement Strategies for Gender Justice

Critical Resistance 10 Conference

Nerissa Kunakemakorn, Justice Now
The Prison Industrial Complex facilitates the destruction of reproductive capacity in three ways:
1) Overuse of hysterectomy and ovarectomy (often nonconsensually)
2) Poor reproductive healthcare provided to people in prisons
3) Imprisonment during the majority of one's reproductive years

More on #1:
-Often these radical procedures are used for fibroids and ovarian cysts, at much higher rates than on the outside
-There are documented cases of sterilization abuse, particularly after childbirth
-The new "gender responsive" prison strategies even discuss the cost effectiveness of sterilization after birth
-Some incarcerated people have been given hysterectomy's for cancers that were later found to be non-existent
-One doctor told a "lifer" (person sentenced to life in prison) that her ovary removal didn't matter since she was going to be in prison forever
-This is very closely connected with a history of sterilization abuse in communities of color (Native American women, Puerto Rican women, Mexican women in LA) More on this here.
-These procedures are disproportionately documented among people of color in prison
-Consent issues around sterilization procedures for people in prison (can someone in prison ever give consent? are there always coercive conditions?)

Elizabeth Barajas-Roman, Population and Development Program

In September of this year, a Texas woman was ordered to stop having children as a condition of her probation. The judge argued that since if she had been in prison for those ten years, she wouldn't have been able to get pregnant, it was a reasonable condition. If she becomes pregnant, she can be put back in prison for violating her parole. Clear connection between the prison industrial complex and population control.

Gabriel Arkles, Sylvia Rivera Law Project

Trans people face a whole different set of problems and barriers in prison. Not only are they targeted for incarceration (because of poverty, sex work, transphobia and racism) but once in prison they face particular challenges. Trans people are placed in prison not based on what their identification says, how they identify or how they present. Instead its usually based on what is between someone's legs. This puts trans people at risk for abuse, sexual or otherwise. Much of this logic (about not putting a trans woman in a woman's prison) is about not wanting there to be a possibility for pregnancy between prisoners. Again more evidence of the population control philosophy, and proof that they don't care about personal safety (or even preventing sexual activity) but just about preventing reproduction.

Other speakers: Maria Nakae, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice and Miss Major Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project

White Dude Knows Best! Above: Men who want to control the bodies of women they deem unfit mothers. Louisiana state Rep. John LaBruzzo (left) and Texas state District Judge Charlie Baird (right).

It's been quite a week for government violation of the bodily integrity of poor women and women of color. First, there was the judge in Texas who set "not having children" as a condition of a woman's parole. (I just linked in the WFR on Sunday, but Cara discussed it at length. Go read her post.)

And today, via several readers, comes the news that John LaBruzzo, a state legislator from Louisiana, wants to pay low-income women $1,000 apiece to get sterilized. Everything about this is so incredibly offensive, I don't know quite where to begin. Let's start with a quote from LaBruzzo:

"We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out, " LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. "And nobody wants to talk about it."

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Low-income women having children is a "dangerous demographic trend"?! Sounds like the recent round of racist propaganda we saw related to the "Demographic Winter" movie. (Film summary: You should be panicked because brown people are reproducing at faster rates than white people.) But LaBruzzo protests that he is not a racist -- he's a problem-solver!

LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.

"It's easy to say, 'Oh, he's a racist, ' " LaBruzzo said. "The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions."

It's not as if this country has ever done a good job providing low-income women with the tools and information to make their own decisions. Programs that aim to do that have been consistently underfunded and poorly implemented. So no, we haven't tried all other options. And even if we had, his idea is still completely appalling.

LaBruzzo is correct that it's very easy to say he's a racist. Because, um, he's espousing a historically racist policy. What he clearly deems to be a new and creative solution has unfortunately been around a long time. Compulsory or coercive sterilizations for low-income women, disabled women, and women of color were extremely common up until the 1970s, and slightly less common but nevertheless occurring with regularity the the decades since. The paternalistic attitude that "certain women" cannot be trusted to make their own reproductive decisions is still an underlying theme of a lot of backwards legal and policy decisions. LaBruzzo and Texas judge Charlie Baird are part of this despicable tradition.

I just returned from my annual weekend in Telluride with my family seeing 15 amazing films. My mom started the Rocky Mountain Women's Film Festival in my hometown, Colorado Springs, after going to the Telluride Film Festival for the first time. Since then it has become a set-in-stone tradition for us, a little jolt of inspiration and art that we experience every Labor Day.

These were the films that I believe have particular feminist resonance from this year's festival, so keep your eyes peeled for them:

American Violet

So often when you see "civil rights" movies, they are set in the time of Jim Crow, Martin and Malcolm. This amazing film--based on a true story--is set in our very own decade. Dee Roberts, a single mom from a tiny town in Texas, is arrested on bogus drug charges--designed to pad the racist district attorney's arrest record. The ACLU gets involved and the rest is history. Dee Roberts and her four kids were actually in Telluride. It always takes your breath away to see a genuine heroine after watching a film like this.

I was especially excited about this film, because an old friend of mine--Malcolm Barrett--stole the show. He and I used to do spoken word poetry together in college and now he's undoubtedly on his way to being a critically-acclaimed actor. Go Malcolm!

On a less encouraging note, this asshole district attorney is still serving in Texas. When the film has its nationwide release, I'll post again about what we can all do to express our absolute outrage that this jerk is still in office.

Everlasting Moments
This Swedish film is a true epic and a frightening look into just how difficult working class women's lives were at the turn of the century. The main character struggles through years of child birthing and rearing, an abusive, alcoholic husband, and poverty with a sort of gritty grace; her salvation is in her discovery of photography.

I was particularly struck by Maria Heiskanen's--the main actor's--capacity to perform the main character as both tough as nails, and frustratingly stuck and permissive to her husband. It beautifully encapsulated women's complex lives and identities at the time.

The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released a report yesterday afternoon on the prevalence of sexual violence in juvenile detention centers. An estimated 4,072 accounts of sexual violence were reported during 2005 and 2006:

An estimated 36 percent of the allegations of sexual violence in juvenile facilities were youth-on-youth nonconsensual sexual acts, such as rape and forcible sodomy; 21 percent were youth-on-youth abusive sexual contacts, such as unwanted touching or grabbing with the intention to exploit sexually.

About 32 percent of all allegations of sexual violence reported in state juvenile systems and local or private juvenile facilities involved staff sexual misconduct, defined as any act of a sexual nature directed toward a youth, either consensual or nonconsensual; 11 percent involved staff sexual harassment, including repeated comments or demeaning references of a sexual nature to a youth.

Victims of substantiated incidents of youth-on-youth sexual violence were more likely to be male (73 percent) than victims of staff-on-youth violence (49 percent). Females were more likely to be victims of staff sexual violence than victims of youth-on-youth sexual violence (51 percent versus 27 percent).

Check out the entire report.

Jeremy Bearer-Friend is a Visiting Fellow at Justice Now and a Leadership Academy Fellow with Young People for the American Way. An educator at heart, Jeremy has taught within public schools, private schools, home schools, after-school programs, museums, colleges and prisons.

Prisons are bad for everyone--not just for the people in cages within them, not just for the children who have lost their parents to them, or the social programs who have their budgets cut because of them.

Prisons distract us from the root causes of violence and ultimately exacerbate the deeply entrenched challenges of racism, sexism and transphobia facing our communities.

Over this past week, Justice Now posted on how prisons operate as a form of population control and gender oppression. In response to this rise of mass incarceration and the disturbing trend of “gender responsive� prison expansion, we have developed the following platform for gender justice:

1. Reduce imprisonment: Decarcerate by reducing the number of people in prison and closing prisons.

2. Support communities, not prisons: Strengthen families and communities by reducing barriers to family reunification and allocating resources towards community-run infrastructure.

3. Foster non-harmful responses to violence: Participate in critical dialogues and movement building to increase our communities’ and networks’ capacities to end all forms of violence.

We challenge you to reconsider the assumption that prisons make us safer, and invite you to consider new ways to address the root causes of violence. Together, we will work to imagine a world without prisons.

Allison Forth, former client coordinator for Justice Now, just finished her Masters in Social Work at Hunter College of Social Work. Allison hopes to help create accountable and sustainable community interventions and programs that are not a part of the criminal legal system.

California is taking a fast turn down the wrong path by building “gender-responsive� prisons. Instead of getting caught up in the urgency of the prison crisis by attempting to create “better� punishment, we should say no to “Female Rehabilitative Community Correctional Centers� on the state and county levels.

Some critical questions we need to ask ourselves include: is it ethical or even possible to create comprehensive and effective treatment in a prison setting? Will “gender-responsive� prison expansion help stop the suffering caused by imprisonment, or is it a band-aid solution that will result in only more lives caught up in the criminal legal system? Will this “gender responsive� prison expansion help solidify the fact that prison is one of the only places female-bodied people and trans women from communities of color and poor communities can access often neglectful and abusive treatment, whether it be healthcare, mental health services or substance abuse treatment?

“Gender-responsive� prison expansion is unethical: it expands a prison system that tears
people and their families’ lives apart. It masks the realities of continued imprisonment with words by calling these mini prisons “community-based facilities� or “group homes�.

Instead of pushing for more prisons, let’s invest in genuine resources for our communities. The challenge has been put forth: as social workers and social service providers, will we take part in prison expansion that will continue to harm individuals and families or help to build better communities?