Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

My latest on Solitary Watch examines deaths at the California Institution for Women this year.

On July 30, 2014, Margarita Murugia was found hanging in her solitary confinement cell at the California Institution for Women (CIW). “She was there for her own protection, not because she did something,” wrote April Harris, a woman currently incarcerated at CIW. ” Apparently her mom was dying of cancer and they refused to let her see her mom. She tried to kill herself with every denied request. She finally did it.”

According to advocacy group California Coalition for Women Prisoners, CIW has had seven deaths since the start of 2014. In comparison, the prison had five deaths in 2013 and one in 2012.

Read the whole story here.

I've also got another story up on Truthout about public prisons and the private corporations that profit from them. Only a few days later, Mississippi prison commissioner Christopher Epps resigned and was arrested for accepting nearly a million dollars in bribes from a private contractor with the prison. While I don't examine that particular contractor in that piece, one can see some of the other ways that private corporations have been profiting off bodies in public prisons: http://truth-out.org/news/item/27138-public-prisons-private-profits