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In November 2006, there was a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Juvenile Justice Center in San Francisco, and planners asked the Center for Young Women's Development (CYWD) to provide a speaker on the Incarcerated Young Mothers' Bill of Rights, which had recently become policy for the new facility. The Incarcerated Young Mothers' Bill of Rights is now policy and aims to protect the rights of pregnant and parenting young mothers at San Francisco's new juvenile hall. This chapter focuses on the Incarcerated Young Mothers' Bill of Rights, a ten-point visionary document that seeks to draw a thick, bright line that prison authorities dare not cross, even though the incarcerated women in question are young and particularly vulnerable. The incarcerated young mothers have identified respect, information, and access to advocates as conditions of their lives in prison that they cannot do without. They want to keep or regain their health. They take their status as mothers very seriously and want the prison authorities to do the same.

Of the nearly 12,000 women incarcerated in California's state prisons in 2007, the vast majority have survived physical, sexual, emotional, and economic abuse by an intimate partner before entering prison. A disproportionate number are women of color whose efforts to gain and maintain a sense of safety for themselves and their children were systematically blocked by the institutional racism and other forms of oppression that they had experienced throughout their lives. Free Battered Women (FBW) works to end the revictimization of incarcerated survivors of domestic violence as part of the movement for racial justice and the struggle to resist all forms of intimate partner violence against women and transgendered people. After many years, society finally has recognized the experiences of battered women in prison. The legislature in California and in many other states now acknowledge that something has to be done for battered women who were incarcerated before the present laws came into effect. The California Habeas Project has become a light in the darkness for wrongfully incarcerated women.

As a prison doula, a birth attendant for incarcerated women, the author of this chapter has learned that incarcerated women love their children as much as any other mother. One of the recurring themes in the stories she has heard from incarcerated mothers is the damaging effects prison has on mothers and their children once they get caught in the criminal justice system or child protective services. The author has had the opportunity to support many women through their experiences of pregnancy, birth, and parenting while incarcerated and feels deeply connected to their struggles and triumphs. Two incarcerated women in Washington State Correction Center for Women, Delessia and Tabitha, worked very hard against daunting odds to keep their families together. Their experiences demonstrate clearly the inhumane and damaging effect of incarceration and suggest a need for alternatives that better meet the needs of people who are struggling with poverty and addiction.

The draconian political climate in the United States has contributed to an evisceration of prison libraries and a substantial reduction in the educational and rehabilitative programs in prisons. Despite these bleak prospects for reading behind bars, the author of this chapter has discovered that some incarcerated women engage in highly resourceful reading practices with the limited materials available to them. As part of a larger study about cultures of reading in women's prisons, she has been conducting interviews and book discussions in a midwestern women's prison. In this chapter, she catalogues the reading habits of the incarcerated women she teaches and the roles of novel reading in their lives. She also provides snapshots of the varied and vital ways in which these women use reading as a means to re-story their lives: to learn about themselves, mediate their histories of pain and violence, gain knowledge and inspiration from other women, and narrate—and sometimes redirect—their own journeys.

Incarcerated women won an important victory when a state court of appeals ruled against a county sheriff's unwritten policy requiring women to obtain a court order in order to be transported from jail to a clinic for an abortion. The unconstitutional policy was that of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who oversaw the jails in Maricopa County, Arizona. Across the country, correctional authorities make it difficult for women to obtain abortions, by forcing them to jump through bureaucratic hoops and refusing to pay for the abortion or even to take them to a clinic. Two important constitutional rights protect women's decisions about pregnancy and abortion. The right to choose abortion applies to all American women, and the right to adequate medical care is guaranteed specifically to people in prison, as part of the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. This chapter shows that prison authorities frequently suspend the constitutionally protected right to privacy of pregnant prisoners, denying or granting them reproductive autonomy according to the whim or the predilections of current prison authorities.

The author, an incarcerated woman, describes the kind of leadership that “experienced” incarcerated women in Alabama and Louisiana have been willing—and determined—to exercise in the interests of their community. She shows how the Longtimers/Insiders Activist Group at Tutwiler Prison in Alabama claimed a voice in decision making about a number of issues, especially about the new women's prison under construction. The participants in this group believe fervently that they can offer important, seasoned insights about the proper size of the new facility, its location, and its programs. The chapter shows that even in a domain governed by crude practicalities and politics, a group of incarcerated women can act on the powerful urge to introduce logic and lay claim to the dignity of experience.

In this chapter, the author, a transgendered Latina, offers insight into the unique hardships encountered by incarcerated transgender women, sometimes at the hands of prison administrators, sometimes via other incarcerated women. The dearth of support groups for transgender women makes it particularly difficult for prisons to meet the special health care, emotional, and safety concerns of imprisoned transgender women. The author calls for more resources and anti-discrimination measures so that transgender women can find support inside and upon release from prison. She argues that if outside gay groups got involved with the Department of Corrections, much of the discrimination beyond prison walls would be eliminated and the staff members could learn more about the lives of gay men and transgender women.

Since 1977, the population of women prisoners in the United States has increased by more than 700 percent. These women are without access to proper health care, without their children, whom many of them will lose permanently; they are without. These stark details are obscene in their materiality. They are facts, but they are only a piece of the picture. The picture is impossible. Indeed, the picture is the problem. This book focuses on the realities of women's experiences inside prison. It presents narratives, essays, poetry, and reports that approach the social, material, and emotional complexities of being incarcerated. It organizes the testimonies of its contributors under topics that highlight the lived experiences of struggle, family, community, and creativity within the intricate, locked system of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia that pervades U.S. prisons. The book is not and cannot be a full picture of women's incarceration: it is a researched, multivocal struggle to highlight the gender-specific technologies of dehumanization within the prison system.

Cook County Jail in Chicago detains between 1,100 and 1,200 women on any given day, most of whom are there for non-violent offenses. The author of this chapter talks about when she started offering writing workshops shortly after a small group of volunteers and a supportive superintendent established a library in one of the conference rooms of the women's division at County. In this chapter, she describes the work of women in a writing program at Cook County Jail. She analyzes the language and the politics of the incarcerated women poets she teaches there. She believes that much of the poetry created in jails and prisons shares elements with the literature of testimony and witness. The poems also reflect the women's constructions and reconstructions of the self, solidarity, and community.

Since 1973, 148 women have been sentenced to death in the United States. As of December 2004, there were 50 women on death row. According to a report entitled “The Forgotten Population,” women's experiences on death row mirror many of the problems that have been documented in the cases of men condemned to death, such as inadequate defense counsel, poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, mental retardation, and mental illness. However, in addition to facing these problems, numerous women on Death Row have also suffered abuse and domestic violence. A particularly disturbing finding of the report is the degree to which many of these incarcerated women live in virtual isolation, which often leads to psychosis or exacerbates existing mental illnesses. “The Forgotten Population” makes thirteen recommendations to improve conditions for women living on death row and to ensure that women receive fair and adequate defense counsel when charged with capital offenses.

The emergence of a vibrant anti-prison movement has brought attention to the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States. Although men make up over 90 percent of prison populations in the United States and globally, women, particularly women of color, play critical roles in anti-prison movements. These movements focus on a range of intertwined issues, from incarcerated women and LGBT (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual) prisoners to political prisoners, private prisons, prison expansion, prison financing, the death penalty, juvenile justice, human rights violations in prisons, and access to health care. This chapter examines four interlocking factors that underlie the prison crisis: the impacts of globalization and economic restructuring on low-income communities in the United States; the war on drugs; the role of globalization in fueling migration from the global South, the criminalization of migration, and the growth in immigrant incarceration in the United States; and the emergence of the prison-industrial complex. The second part of the chapter discusses the anti-prison movement. It looks at the anti-racist and feminist abolitionist visions developed by anti-prison activists and describes steps toward a world without prisons.

Gathering in groups, expressing their fears, frustrations, and hopes, 113 incarcerated women at the largest women's prison in the United States described their need for adequate health care inside prison walls. Twenty focus groups met at Central California Women's Facility over a ten-month period in 2001 and 2002. The author of this chapter helped organize the groups so that incarcerated women could define ways to reduce their health and medical vulnerabilities inside the prison. The women's comments resulted in the compilation and publication of a handbook, Simple Answers to Difficult Healthcare Questions—Choice. The focus group discussions followed a predetermined set of questions in four areas: knowledge/information, experience/process, barriers, and outcomes.

This chapter presents a trio of “fact sheets” detailing some of the most horrible health challenges that plague incarcerated women—and that define the gruesome distance between American ideals and American practices in this domain. The facts relate to physical and/or sexual abuse in prison, HIV and hepatitis C, and substance abuse. For example, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that more than 37 percent of women in state prisons have been raped before their incarceration; some 14.2 percent of women in New York's prisons are HIV positive; in 2006, more than 38 percent of women sent to prison for drug offenses were convicted of B-level drug crimes.

This chapter draws upon in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated women to examine the kinds of support they most appreciated, or would like to have received, while transitioning from prison back to free society. As the interviewees demonstrate, the notion of freedom is complicated, for even after incarceration the women's sense of self is impacted heavily by their experiences in prison. The evidence in this study suggests complex layers of identity that defy the unidimensional stigma of “convict” that is often imposed on women who have been incarcerated. The women's personal stories convey their perceptions of themselves, their perceptions of how they are viewed by society, and the kinds of resources they need for a successful return to their communities.

California is one of seventeen states that deny welfare and food stamps for life to people who were convicted of a drug felony after August 22, 1996. As a result of this policy, more than 2,289 people in need in Alameda County who have applied for food stamps have been denied. Nationally, 30 percent of incarcerated women were receiving welfare in the month prior to their arrest, and these women are likely to require public assistance after their release. By taking away the supports that former prisoners need to make the transition from prison, the government encourages recidivism, breaks up families, and perpetuates a discriminatory system of imprisoning the poor, who are disproportionately people of color. California's drug felony exclusion policy is harmful and unnecessary. The 1996 federal welfare act allows states to opt out of the ban. The California legislature is considering a bill that would restore food stamp eligibility to people who have prior felony convictions of drug possession.

The author, a legal services lawyer, describes in this chapter her work with formerly incarcerated women in two advocacy programs at the Women's Prison Association and Home (WPA) and at the Women in Prison Project (WIPP) of the Correctional Association of New York. The goal of the WPA's program, the Women's Advocacy Project (WAP), is to develop leaders able to craft solutions to the many-faceted challenges facing incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. Similarly, ReConnect, part of WIPP, trains women in advocacy and leadership. Both programs work to enhance women's natural leadership skills so that they can engage in collective policy advocacy. The participants in both programs have had varying levels of involvement with the criminal justice system, but they share a desire to bring about improvements in criminal justice policies that affect women in and out of jail and prison. The author's principal role in these workshops was to teach participants about family law, especially laws relating to custody and foster care.

The report presented here was prepared in 1999 for the United Nations Human Rights Commission as part of an investigation of human rights violations around the world. The special investigator for violence against women, Radhika Coomaraswany, a lawyer from Sri Lanka, visited state and federal prisons in six U.S. states and the District of Columbia, taking testimony from many incarcerated women and prison employees. Coomaraswany's report highlights the fact that incarcerated women in the United States are disproportionately poor and black and many of them are there because they were unwittingly involved in drug trafficking. It also describes the unacceptable use of shackles on refugees and asylum seekers at the airport and on women in labor. The report calls for minimum standards of treatment to conform with U.S. obligations under international human rights treaties.

In this chapter, the author, one of the many incarcerated women who find that life after prison is a constant struggle, recounts her story. Reuniting with her children has been an uphill battle. She left when they were still small, expecting them to be the same when she returned and expecting that meeting them again would be an easy process. Her sense of worthiness as a person has been challenged by the emotional impact of child abuse, drug dependence, and incarceration, particularly in the way it has shaped the relationships she has with her children. Today, very different in mind and spirit than she was during those other introductions, she is able to face her daughter Dani. She is at peace with her past. Another daughter, Aja, is determined to have clarity in her life, challenging the author to look at her own choices. During those moments when clarity is needed, she offers her children an opportunity to see her as she is. She is able to give this today.

In this chapter, the author, a former prisoner, recognizes that as a mother and a person trying to remake her life, she is “paying and paying and paying,” financially, emotionally, professionally, years later—“still paying for those ten months” inside. When she got out of prison, she had a lot of debts, deferred school loans that she had to pay. It took a long time to deal with the impact on her son and on their relationship. It has taken years and a lot of counseling—time and energy—to fix the relationship with her son and for him to feel good about himself. The author still has as part of her self-identity that she is a convicted felon, and that is never going to go away. But she also credits her hard experience with waking her up to “politics,” and to the way the world works. She no longer relies on the mass media or on others to explain things, to fix things. Now the author is an activist in Chicago who invites other formerly incarcerated women and allies to do important work with her.