Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women in Prison.

• Author: Jacobs, Michelle S.
• Position: Book Review

PAULA C. JOHNSON, INNER LIVES: VOICES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN IN PRISON (NEW YORK AND LONDON: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2003). 339 PP.

1. INTRODUCTION

   For professionals working with the issues of women and criminality, the lean years of working without the support of solid empirical data are coming to an end. In the past, professionals working on women and crime toiled in the dark as there were few studies which focused specifically on women's criminality, and little empirical data existed to support theoretical approaches. Lawyers and women's advocates sensed that crime committed by women was different from crime committed by men and that each type of crime affected society in different ways. However, the only information available to support these beliefs was anecdotal stories. Today, a combination of factors gives women's advocates new tools to support their arguments that crimes committed by women are different than those committed by men. Not only do men and women follow different paths into crime, (1) but their crimes also cause different types of harm to society. (2)

   The treatment needs of women who offend are different than men, (3) and large scale incarceration of women creates another set of problems, increasing the number of children who live with other relatives or who are forced into foster care. (4) Today, the empirical data which criminologists, sociologists, and psychologists began to collect in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s is available to tell us about women's crime. The Bureau of Justice now tracks and analyzes FBI statistics on women's crime.

   The statistics provide a startling picture. The advent of mandatory sentencing schemes and strict punishment for drug offenses has been devastating to women. Many states have adopted harsh mandatory sentencing schemes. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which eliminated gender and family responsibility as factors for consideration at the time of sentencing, were adopted. (5) The policy of eliminating gender and family responsibility, combined with heightened penalties for drug related violations, has caused the level of women's incarceration to spiral upward. For the year 1999, 1 in 109 women were under correctional supervision. (6) In 1997, African American women had an incarceration rate of 200 per 100,000 compared to 25 per 100,000 for non-Hispanic white women. (7) Recently, the media turned its attention to prisons, prisoners, and the financial and societal impact that mandatory sentencing guidelines are having on the rate of incarceration of men and women, (8) The articles have drawn attention to the increasing rates of women being incarcerated and the severity of their sentencing. (9) In Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women In Prison, Professor Paula Johnson has written about the most invisible of these incarcerated women--incarcerated African American women, (10) The statistics of the Bureau of Justice that Professor Johnson shares in her book demonstrate that the number of women incarcerated in the United States increased by seventy-five percent between 1986 and 1991. (11) Of these women, a disproportionate number are black women. (12) The percentages vary by region and by the nature of institution (county jail, state prison or federal facility), but the bottom line remains the same. In every instance, black women are incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their percentage in the general population. For example, of the number of women incarcerated in state prisons, only 33% are white, while 48% are black, 15% are Hispanic and 4% other. (13) A similar pattern exists in local jails: 36% of women were white, 44% black, 15% Hispanic and 5% other. (14) The numbers for white women are even lower in the federal prisons where 29% are white, 35% black and Hispanic women account for 32% of the number of women incarcerated. (15) The only correctional status which does not reflect this pattern is women on probation. Of the number of women on probation, 62% are white, 27% black, 10% Hispanic and 1% other. (16) This statistic reveals that white women are far more likely to be given probation than any other group of women in the system. (17)

   Although the statistics vary somewhat by state, the ratios do not change. For example, in New York, 53% of women confined in state prison are African American, 27% Latina and 19 go white. The three states with the highest number of women incarcerated are California, Texas and Florida. (19) However, Oklahoma has the highest per capita rate of incarceration for women. (20) The casual reader would miss the overwhelming presence of women of color, particularly black women, in prisons. Media attention, when it has elected to focus on women prisoners, tends to portray white female inmates as the image of the incarcerated woman. (21)

   In Inner Lives, Professor Johnson offers African American incarcerated women an opportunity to push back the veil of invisibility and to claim for themselves the right to control their stories and their own images. The women accepted the opportunity. (22) The image they present in their own words is a complex one. The women talk about the strengths they had to have to survive sexual abuse, physical abuse, lack of resources and drug addiction. They speak of the strength required to survive not only incarceration, but the awareness that they harmed their victims, the victims' families, (23) their own family members, and themselves. (24) The stories test the limits of our understanding of individual responsibility on the one hand, and wholesale societal failure to provide a safety net for some of our most vulnerable citizens on the other.

   1. TO WHOM DOES THE BOOK SPEAK?

      Inner Lives evolved out of Paula Johnson's ongoing work on the topic of African American women and crime. In the course of writing the book, she interviewed over 300 women, their family members, service providers who interact with them, and criminal justice professionals. In this project, Johnson addresses multiple audiences, each with a different level of education and knowledge about the functioning of law. Most importantly, the book is directed towards the women whose life stories are relayed, as well as the hundreds of thousands of incarcerated women who have had remarkably similar experiences. The book acknowledges the existence of these women and validates them as members of the larger community as well as valued members of the black community. The level of education attained by these women varies greatly: from near illiteracy to college credits attained while incarcerated. No matter the level of education, Johnson manages to keep the material accessible to this critical audience.

      At the same time, Johnson uses the book to address lawyers, judges and legal scholars who, while well versed in the law, lag behind in their understanding of the conditions facing African American women who are accused of committing crimes. This is a critical audience, because their actions seriously curtail the ability of African Americans accused of crimes to gain access to justice. Moreover, the ignorance of the legal audience keeps the women's issues off the political radar, preventing meaningful consideration of allocation of resources to address women's conditions of confinement.

      Johnson's third audience is composed of professionals who work in the criminal justice system, either as policy makers or as administrators charged with implementing policy. Criminal justice professionals are just beginning to come to terms with the existence of large numbers of women in the correctional setting and the unique problems that accompany this inmate population. Johnson's book is a timely and important addition to the arsenal of information now available to policy makers and law enforcers regarding the needs of female inmates in general, and of the specific needs of African American female inmates.

      Finally, Johnson constructs the project such that everyone in society is forced to acknowledge the humanity of incarcerated black women. Through their voices, Johnson warns us of the ultimate costs of wholesale incarceration of black women which includes, at the very least, a continued break down of already fragile family and community structures. In addition to the women's voices, Johnson adds another weapon. She uses her skills as a free-lance photographer and gives us an actual picture of each of the women whose narrative is used. On the surface, having a photograph would not seem to add much, but when one actually sees the photographs, that presumption is readily dismissed. It is easy to remain detached from the statistical information. While the statistics are interesting, and some may argue compelling, they are just numbers on a sheet of paper. The narratives bring life to the numbers, but the photographs make the women real. It is impossible to look at a photograph of Betty Tyson, a woman who served twenty-five years for a murder she did not commit, and not feel the weariness that has been etched into her face. Or the distant sadness of Millicent Pierce, who in order to protect herself, killed the man she loved the most. It is impossible not to see the determination in the face of Joyce Ann Brown, who served ten years for a crime she did not commit. What measure of strength and hope do the countenances of Rae Ann and Marilyn provide us all? The photographs remind us that these women reflect all of our humanities and that we are accountable to them just as much as they are accountable to us.

   2. SETTING THE HISTORICAL STAGE

      Inner Lives is divided into three sections. Section I opens with a current statistical summary of women's crime. Johnson then grounds this portion of the book with her historical research on black women's interactions with American law. She describes the major historical aspects of law that have devalued the existence and humanity of African American women and the manner in which black women's behavior...