![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
picture your grandmother in prison
Oct. 15th, 2008 08:01 pmYesterday in my gerontology class I wrote a letter to a 73-year-old woman in prison for life for 1st degree murder of her husband.
"I'd kill him again," she wrote when directly asked whether or not she thought her sentence was justified. "He bought a gun. I knew he was going to kill me. It was a matter of him or me."
Most female inmates in their 60's and older are in prison because they murdered abusive husbands or conspired to murder their abusive husbands. The ones who were willing to talk to the social worker who presented to our class about women aging in prison say that they don't regret what they did. They remark upon how much more violent incoming inmates are because many of the "new girls" are female gangbangers or got caught trying to help out or protect a bad boyfriend.
"The conditions here are inhumane. You have youth and education," she wrote to our class, "You must help us." The typical cell houses 8 women sleeping in 4 bunkbeds. The wardens rarely honor requests for older women having priority to sleep in the lower bunks, which puts them at greater risk for falls. They work for $1.50/day in the state of California; the lucky ones train to go into cosmetology, but most of the others are involved in eyeglasses manufacturing (Lenscrafters has a contract with certain prisons) and other blue-collar industrial sectors. They have no choice but to drop to the ground in the scorching heat during certain drills without even the reprieve of shade.
Healthcare access is extremely limited; they can only schedule an appointment for one medical condition at a time, which is a problem when you have comorbid health problems and when the copay is $5. Many choose to forgo medication in order to buy food. Nutrition is appalling - "the food is all beige and from cans," and fruits and vegetables are hardly a priority. Forget about having the canteen take into account special dietary needs if you're diabetic or if your dentures are ill-fitting, which they almost certainly are and took ages to obtain. Substance abuse issues are generally given the blind eye. And god knows that STDs and STIs, especially AIDS, are reaching epidemic proportions for all inmates. Older women significantly underestimate their risk for getting HIV.
Maybe it is relatively clean and the guards don't beat you in the women's facilities. But when you have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and don't go to bed until 11 and your sentence is 20+ years, it's undeniable that it's a damn hard life. The question is about what we expect to get out of sending criminals to prison: is our focus on rehabilitation or on emotional retribution? Obtaining parole is harder than most think; from what I've heard from some forensic psychologists, parole board members can make $100,000 a year. Think about the financial implications for them if an inmate continues to be up for parole and has to keep coming back.
After reading her account, I had no idea what I should write back. Then I remembered what my counseling supervisor last spring told me that's stayed with me since: when in doubt, you can always fall back on empathy. I have to admit, I was a little shocked by her response about whether or not she'd kill her husband again; I can't imagine what it's like to be in a position where I didn't think I had any other way of protecting myself. It's awful to think that in her time that she felt she had no other choices to deal with her domestic abuse. There's still so much that needs to be done about domestic violence nowadays, but at least shelters exist now as a haven for battered women and their children. I asked her about what she thought should be done to make prisons more humane and better serve the needs of older inmates like herself.
I wonder if I'll get a response back. I don't even know her name, just the first initial of her first name due to privacy issues. It's virtually impossible to schedule prison visits these days because of Schwarzenegger's budget cut. Visitors require extra guards and extra processing, so many advocates aren't able to check up on conditions now.
"I'd kill him again," she wrote when directly asked whether or not she thought her sentence was justified. "He bought a gun. I knew he was going to kill me. It was a matter of him or me."
Most female inmates in their 60's and older are in prison because they murdered abusive husbands or conspired to murder their abusive husbands. The ones who were willing to talk to the social worker who presented to our class about women aging in prison say that they don't regret what they did. They remark upon how much more violent incoming inmates are because many of the "new girls" are female gangbangers or got caught trying to help out or protect a bad boyfriend.
"The conditions here are inhumane. You have youth and education," she wrote to our class, "You must help us." The typical cell houses 8 women sleeping in 4 bunkbeds. The wardens rarely honor requests for older women having priority to sleep in the lower bunks, which puts them at greater risk for falls. They work for $1.50/day in the state of California; the lucky ones train to go into cosmetology, but most of the others are involved in eyeglasses manufacturing (Lenscrafters has a contract with certain prisons) and other blue-collar industrial sectors. They have no choice but to drop to the ground in the scorching heat during certain drills without even the reprieve of shade.
Healthcare access is extremely limited; they can only schedule an appointment for one medical condition at a time, which is a problem when you have comorbid health problems and when the copay is $5. Many choose to forgo medication in order to buy food. Nutrition is appalling - "the food is all beige and from cans," and fruits and vegetables are hardly a priority. Forget about having the canteen take into account special dietary needs if you're diabetic or if your dentures are ill-fitting, which they almost certainly are and took ages to obtain. Substance abuse issues are generally given the blind eye. And god knows that STDs and STIs, especially AIDS, are reaching epidemic proportions for all inmates. Older women significantly underestimate their risk for getting HIV.
Maybe it is relatively clean and the guards don't beat you in the women's facilities. But when you have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and don't go to bed until 11 and your sentence is 20+ years, it's undeniable that it's a damn hard life. The question is about what we expect to get out of sending criminals to prison: is our focus on rehabilitation or on emotional retribution? Obtaining parole is harder than most think; from what I've heard from some forensic psychologists, parole board members can make $100,000 a year. Think about the financial implications for them if an inmate continues to be up for parole and has to keep coming back.
After reading her account, I had no idea what I should write back. Then I remembered what my counseling supervisor last spring told me that's stayed with me since: when in doubt, you can always fall back on empathy. I have to admit, I was a little shocked by her response about whether or not she'd kill her husband again; I can't imagine what it's like to be in a position where I didn't think I had any other way of protecting myself. It's awful to think that in her time that she felt she had no other choices to deal with her domestic abuse. There's still so much that needs to be done about domestic violence nowadays, but at least shelters exist now as a haven for battered women and their children. I asked her about what she thought should be done to make prisons more humane and better serve the needs of older inmates like herself.
I wonder if I'll get a response back. I don't even know her name, just the first initial of her first name due to privacy issues. It's virtually impossible to schedule prison visits these days because of Schwarzenegger's budget cut. Visitors require extra guards and extra processing, so many advocates aren't able to check up on conditions now.
