Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

Lois Ahrens, the director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project, a national organization based in Northampton, working to end mass incarceration. In today's Daily Hampshire Gazette, she responds to the expansion of the Chicopee Jail:

NORTHAMPTON - In 2007, when Sheriff Michael Ashe of Hampden County opened his new jail for women in Chicopee, he apparently knew he would need 56 additional cells. The new jail, with a capacity to house 240 women, was not enough and he began his campaign to get what he believes he needs.

On March 19, a State Integrity Investigation report led by the Center for Public Integrity was made public. It gave Massachusetts a D in public accountability in the budgeting process and D+ in legislative accountability. (The overall grade for Massachusetts was C.)

This might begin to explain how the Commonwealth has issued a $550 million bond for more prison and jail building and "expansion" with no input, save from those in a circle which includes the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, sheriffs and the legislators who apparently unquestioningly believe them. The 10-year bond will pay for building new prisons for dying and aging prisoners and the expansion and/or building of three new jails for women, with one in Chicopee.

Sheriff Ashe is finally getting what he knew all along he would need. Apparently, years ago he knew that the conditions which lead to the incarceration of women would not change - thus, guaranteeing him prisoners, convicted and not - for the jail.

Kate Decou, the former assistant superintendent of the Hampden County jail, wrote in the Journal of Correctional Health in 1998 "that 75 percent of women reported histories of sexual and physical violence, 82 percent were arrested for drug offenses, 15 percent had severe mental illness, 50 percent reported symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, 33 percent were homeless upon arrest and 85 percent were mothers."

I doubt this has changed for the better since then. Although there has been no public announcement and no news report, it appears that 64 new cells will be built in Chicopee. Bids for a new building are out now. The plan is to break ground next month, and it is projected that the new jail will be open in the fall of 2013. No estimate for the cost for building the jail has been released.

And, of course no mention is made of the fact that it costs $36,000 a year for each woman to be incarcerated at the jail. The stated plan is that the jail will be a combination of medium and minimum security classifications. From what I have learned, the new jail will incarcerate women from the four western counties who are wrapping up their sentences at Framingham prisons. This will not be 64 women.

From my conversations with women formerly incarcerated at the jail and others who work there, at no time since the jail has opened has it ever been full. That includes 53 cells for women being held there "pre-trial" - that is, not convicted of anything, but often too poor to post $50 in bail.

The rhetoric from the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security and Ashe is that the new jail will be "better" for women since they will be closer to home.

Unless, there is some sudden increase in crime among women in western Massachusetts, it seems unlikely that Ashe will be able to fill both the current and new jail with women from our region, since he cannot fill the one he has. This will mean that women will be incarcerated in Chicopee from other parts of the state - further from home.

For example, I have learned that women from Worcester will be sent there. Despite protestations to the contrary, Ashe believes in jail. In 2006, the assistant deputy superintendent of the jail, Sally Johnson Van Wright, said this in an article about the soon-to-be-opened Chicopee jail: "We incarcerate to set free." As long as the Legislature and others see jail as the answer, the money will follow.

Pre-trial diversion programs and bail reform, successful in other states, are much less costly in terms of actual dollars. They also provide women with opportunities to heal from the sexual abuse, dependency on drugs and alcohol which cause them to become involved with the criminal justice system. There are many tools in the tool box of alternatives to incarceration.

But if you only believe in the hammer, everything looks like a nail.

For information on the public integrity report, visit www.stateintegrity.org/massachusetts