As incarceration, particularly the incarceration of women, has dramatically expanded over the last decade, so have prison reform and abolition movements within the United States. Wishing to continue conversations on these trends, the Barnard Center for Research on Women has featured many scholars and activists over the years who have explored the causes and circumstances surrounding women’s imprisonment and the general growth of the prison industrial complex. Since 2000, the Center has been the institutional location for Barnard’s participation in the Redirection Through Education Program at Bedford Hills Women’s Correctional Facility. Barnard’s Women’s Studies Department now also supports a course each year for the program. As the “Changing Minds” discussion featured in this issue shows, education in prison is crucial to changing future possibilities for the lives of women who have been imprisoned. The systemic problem of incarceration cannot be solved only by helping individual women, however, and so in 2001, we began our “Women Seeking Justice” lecture series, which aims to provide a forum for discussions about imprisonment, its causes and consequences. Over the years, the Center has also forged cooperative relationships with organizations like JusticeWorks Community and the Moratorium Campaign, a worldwide project to end the death penalty. “Women, Prisons and Change” is another step in our commitment to facilitating conversation and acting on these issues.
“Women, Prisons and Change” stems from our programs on women in prison and includes the 2006 Scholar and Feminist Conference, “Engendering Justice: Prisons, Activism and Change,” along with several of the lectures in our “Women Seeking Justice” series. The 2006 conference brought together dozens of activists for a day of conversation and workshops. We are thrilled that Rebecca Haimowitz agreed to make a film based on the conference footage, as well as post-conference interviews with many of the panelists who are key figures in the abolition movement.
This issue, which includes pieces from 30 scholars and activists, makes several key contributions to the prison reform and abolition movements. One of the factors that abets the expansion of incarceration is its relative invisibility in everyday life. Despite the fact that policing forms the parameters of daily existence in the United States, those not caught up in the criminal justice system rarely catch sight of its operations. This issue is dedicated to making visible the workings of the justice system and the various injustices in and through which it operates. The excerpts from documentary films and the accompanying reviews included in this issue extend the project of making visible the largely invisible world of prison life, as well as the irreparable consequences that imprisonment has on families and communities. Through What I Want My Words to Do to You in the “Changing Minds” section, we see the power that college-in-prison programs can have on the lives of inmates. Through Troop 1500, we observe incarcerated mothers and their daughters trying to rebuild their broken relationships. Through Cruel and Unusual, we witness the cruelty in placing transgender women in men’s prisons. These are just a few injustices within our justice system that this issue makes visible.
“Women, Prisons and Change” also focuses on what we can do to change this system. The first step is ending the cruel and unusual punishment of execution, and we include lectures by the two leading advocates for the abolition of the death penalty, Sister Helen Prejean and Angela Davis. Although they disagree on the debate between prison reform and prison abolition, together they make the strongest possible case that the death penalty can and should be abolished. In addition, the combination of the presentations by the Engendering Justice panelists and Angela Davis demonstrate the links between the prison abolition movement and broader social justice movements, making it clear that these movements and the issues that they address are inextricable. They show that our society has chosen to incarcerate individuals at the margins (i.e. people of color, people living in poverty, substance abusers, gender non-conforming people, people in need of healthcare, victims of domestic violence, etc.) instead of providing a support system for them. Meanwhile, people from privileged backgrounds who commit crimes face little accountability. These presentations also make it clear that once brought into our racist, classist and homophobic criminal justice system, individuals at the margins are treated much worse than others.
Lastly, many of the contributors present a new vision for justice. They show that if we can eliminate the death penalty (Sister Helen Prejean and Angela Davis), increase educational opportunities for incarcerated people (Changing Minds panelists), eliminate post-conviction penalties (Patricia Allard and Vivian Nixon), an end to criminalizing marginalized people, including gender nonconforming individuals, people of color, and people living in poverty (Andrea Ritchie and Chino Hardin) and an end to the privatization of prisons and the corruption within them (Julia Sudbury), our system of justice will be greatly improved. Even more so, we can find alternatives to policing, imprisonment and punishment (Kai Barrow, Alex Lee and Ije Ude). In so doing, we might manage to do away with prisons altogether, as many of the Engendering Justice activists envision, and turn to community-based forms of conflict resolution; we can eliminate the need to violence with more violence from policing and prisons.
We hope this issue will educate and motivate our readers to take action towards dismantling the injustices of our justice system.
