Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

Feminist Review recently interviewed writer and activist Victoria Law on her book Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. Here Law shares her thoughts on making her book an activist tool, the culture’s blind spot about the prison industry, social justice movements’ responsibility to incarcerated women’s issues, and how motherhood radically altered her own work and informed her upcoming anthology, Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind.

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You write in the book that calls for reform have failed to adequately address the factors leading to women’s incarceration. How so?

Prisons fail to address the societal conditions that lead to incarceration, such as poverty and the increasing feminization of poverty, misogyny, violence, racism, and the issues that accompany women to prison. How does locking someone in a cage address any of these factors?

You have to remember that people have gone to prison face numerous obstacles in successfully reintegrating into the community when they are released from prison. Oftentimes, they are not only released with the same lack of resources and opportunities than they had before being arrested and incarcerated, but now have a criminal record which prevents them from getting certain jobs, qualifying for certain housing, or social safety nets. The 1996 welfare “reform” banned people with drug felonies for life. Similar legislation banned them from receiving governmental financial aid for college, etc.

We also need to keep in mind that prison issues affect all sorts of issues on the outside, shifting money and resources away from other public entities, such as education, housing, health care, drug treatment, and other societal supports that are needed.

Did motherhood change your own activism?

Before motherhood, I was super-involved in all sorts of political projects and organizing. New motherhood definitely made me sit still! Once my daughter was born, I realized that I had to pick a few issues and focus on them. I also couldn’t risk arrest or bringing my daughter to something where the police might attack the crowd.

I started researching resistance and organizing among incarcerated women shortly after my daughter was born. Being stuck inside during the winter with a newborn gave me a lot of time to read, respond to letters, contemplate ideas and issues—this, by the way, is something I did a lot while nursing—and work on draft after draft of this paper. I don’t know if I would have had this same opportunity if I had tried to do this as a childfree person rushing off from one political [event] to another at various hours of the day and night, or if my daughter had been older, more mobile, and needing more direct attention.

I want to stress that what’s made my continued involvement and even writing my book possible is the huge amount of support I get from my friends and the people with whom I organize. I realize that not all mothers get this type of support, although they should, and that I’m extremely fortunate to have such a wonderful support system.

The full interview is at: http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2009/11/resistance-through-writing-in...