Tag Archives: Silja

    
I'm pleased to introduce our next guest, Silja Talvi.

Ms. Talvi is a full-time investigative journalist and essayist with credits
in more than 75 publications, including The Nation, Salon and the Christian
Science Monitor. In the fall of 2005, she became a Senior Editor at In These
Times magazine. "Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison
System" (published by Seal Press, an imprint of Avalon/Perseus), is her
first full-length non-fiction book.

She describes herself as "thoroughly curious about other human beings on a
daily basis" and says she is an "often cranky, but always passionate and
deeply engaged human being."

Leading the conversation is Jack King.

Mr. King is a criminal defense lawyer, writer and author in Washington, DC,
and the director of public affairs and communications for the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.  A professional bar association
founded in 1958, NACDLs 12,000-plus direct members in 28 countries  and 94
state, provincial and local affiliate organizations totaling over 40,000
members  include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders,
military defense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving
fairness within the criminal justice system. He is admitted to practice in
Washington, DC, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The views here are Mr. King's and do not represent policies or positions of
the NACDL except where noted.

    
You've written extensively on prisons in America, in your 2002 book
Prison Nation, and as a senior editor for In These Times.

As an introduction to our discussion of your latest book, Women Behind
Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System, I'd like to
posit, for argument's sake, the the people and politicians of the
United States have gone quite mad.

According to a recent report by a study group of the Pew Charitable
Trusts, more than 1 in 100 Americans is currently behind bars. The
United States not only has the highest incarceration rate on the
planet, but possibly the largest number of prisoners of any country on
earth, population notwithstanding.  Congress and the governments of the
several states seem to think the solution to any deviant misbehavior
is jail time.  

Before we get into the specific subject of women in prison, it seems
to me that the U.S. prefers retribution to rehabilitation. Would you
care to comment on incarceration as a corrective measure generally?

    

It's a pleasure to be here, and I want to thank Cynthia for bringing me back
to participating on the Well in a way I haven't for a long time. The Well
was an incredibly essential, formative part of my academic and early writing
career, before the stressors and unpredictable twists and turns of life took
me away from a lot of the things I enjoyed most.

So, that said, I also want to thank Jack for moderating this event.

The question that you pose is a very broad one, with so many facets/aspects
to it, that it's hard to sum up a response. Moreoever, the criminal justifce
system isn't a cohesive one, as many of you know. Federal institutions are
quite different from one another, as are state facilities, work-releases,
rehabilitation/re-entry programs, jails, juvenile detention centers, etc.
Often the approach of the institution is *so* dependent on the warden or
supervisor that it's alarming to see that there is little or no continuity
in approach once that person leaves--or is forced out for being too
progressive-minded, as the case might be.

In general, however, I would agree that the American inclination is toward a
law-and-order society at odds with itself. On the one hand, there is
tremendous outrage and vehemence directed at people who use or deal drugs,
commit acts of violence and sexual assault in general, and people who act in
aberrant or gender-role defiant ways--whether we're talking about female
gangbangers or women who lash out at their abusers.

Retribution is most definitely the aim there in sentencing and the
conditions of confinement, speaking in general terms.

On the other hand, ours is a society quite willing to look the other way
when people in positions of power and/or a modicum of celebrity cache are
caught doing something illegal. Similarly, DUIs resulting in serious injury
or death of pedestrians or other drivers are treated with remarkably *light*
sentences (in general), as are crimes involving the trafficking or pimping
out of women, to give but a few examples.

We are not consistent or fair in our sentencing policies, and our
perspectives on *what* constitutes crime or criminal inclination/behavior
are very skewed. I would say that they're alarming and quite bizarre, esp.
when we're talking about drug addiction, prostitution, and petty crimes
related to a person's mental state, lack of housing, and/or severe histories
of abuse and lingering trauma.

It is the latter category that I focus on the most in my work, w/r/t girls
and women, most of whom are doing time on drug-related and non-violent
offenses. To a far greater degree than men, women come into the system with
histories of sexual, physical abuse, domestic violence, rape, and mental
illness. The same is true for the prevalence of chronic illness, HIV, and
hepatitis C. 1/3 of women coming into the criminal justice system (first,
through city/county jails) were homeless when they were arrested.

Lastly, I want to note that Women Behind Bars is a work of investigative
journalism, and one where the women's stories and experiences are the
primary emphasis. I am very well-versed in the statistics and
sociological/academic studies related to the broader issue of incarceratio
n in this country (and other countries, as well)--and I am more than happy
to share this kind of material with you. But my work through federal, state
prisons, as well as jails and juvenile detention centers, was intended to
bring the voices of these individuals to the fore.

If we are going to incarcerate some 203,000 women in this country, for a
total of 1.3 million women under some form of correctional supervision, we
need to know who they are.

Moreover, we need to know how and why they ended up in the system, and how
the experience of imprisonment changes their lives.

Are we safer today because we lock up well over 2.3 million Americans? Are
we being fiscally sensible? Does our drug war serve anything akin to its
intended purpose? I would say 'no' on all of these fronts.

To be clear, I do believe there is a place for confinement and isolation
from the public. I do believe that there are individuals who should never be
set free in society again because they have committed heinous crimes and hve
no inkling toward rehabilitation, much less any measure of
compassion/empathy for the people who they've harmed or killed. (Or for
their families and loved ones.) Sociopathy really isn't curable, and i don't
have a problem saying that.

But these people are a very small segment of our prison population,
something that is even more true for our female prison population. 98% of
prisoners *will* be released eventually. Roughly 2/3 end up *back* in the
system within a three-year timeframe. Many of those people are actually re-
arrested within in hours, days, or weeks of release, and that is as true for
women as it is for men.

That said, is what we're doing vis a vis the punishment of crimes making any
sense? Are we really ensuring the ostensibly desired result of lower crime
rates, addiction recovery, and people who come out of the system *better*
than when they went in? Absolutely not.

I would love to hear from those of you, in particular, who have had a chance
to look at the book, but I'm more than happy to talk with you all about
any/all of the issues I address in Women Behind Bars.

For more, please feel free to visit: www.womenbehindbars.org

and

http://www.sealpress.com/book.php?isbna=9781580051958

In tomorrow's post, I'll share some of my upcoming events and links to other
sites w/ radio interviews and print articles about the book.

I'm also excited to talk with other journalists about the research that went
into the book, my techniques for reporting, my correspondence and in-person
interviews with incarcerated females, and much more. (For that matter, I'm
happy to be able to talk about any of the above with anyone who's interest
ed in the process of writing a book like this, which took some 2 solid years
of research, travel, long stretches of intensive immersion, and the
emotional struggle that became a near-crippling part of writing this book.

(BTW, I didn't write Prison Nation, but I was honored to be able to have two
chapters in the book on sexual abuse behind bars, as well as the hidden
epidemic of hep C in our nation's prisons. Paul Wright co-edited that book,
and his latest is Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration
(New Press: 2008). He and I will be presenting together at Elliott Bay, 730
pm, this Sunday. EB is in Seattle.

Again, thank you for stopping by and for your interest in this book.

    

(NOTE: Offsite readers with questions or comments may have them added to
this conversation by emailing <inkwell@well.com> -- please be sure to put
"Women Behind Bars" in the subject line. Thanks!)

    
One of the things that struck me when reading the book is the degree
to which jails and prisons have become America's new mental health
facilities.  A cynic might say that we've solved the problems of the
infamous "snake pit" asylums of the 19th and 20th centuries by
criminalizing mental illness.  Now we don't have to feel guilty about
the psychotic babbling away in a dirty cell because after all they are
a "criminal" and deserve whatever they get.  

If the measure of a civilization is how it treats its least fortunate
members, we don't look so good.