By Silja J.A. Talvi, Seal Press. Posted November 1, 2007.
Women in jail can suffer slow and painful deaths for treatable and simple illnesses simply as a result of the horrific state of prison health care.
Women Behind Bars by Silja Talvi (Seal Press, 2007)
Why a book about women in prison?
Readers of Women Behind Bars might ask the logical question of why an entire book should be focused on female incarceration while men are still, by far, the majority of people getting arrested and locked up. To many criminologists and writers who cover prison issues, the percentage of women in prison is so small as to warrant little, if any, attention or analysis. (Indeed, at many of the prison-related conferences that I have attended over the years, prisoners are referred to by the male pronoun almost exclusively.)
This question is entirely valid, and deserves a response. Men do face unique issues and hardships in prison, and the overrepresentation of men of color (especially African Americans), the mentally ill, and poor people in general has been more of an overall focus in my work than women's issues in prison until this point.
The deeper I began to delve into the underlying reasons for the rapid growth of girls and women in lock-up, the more insight I gained into a world that few outsiders see, much less understand. Once I began to pay particularly close attention to the ways in which females in the criminal justice system were portrayed in the media, it became clear to me that stereotypes and judgments about "fallen women" from centuries ago were still holding fast.
(Click on the link below to read the entire article)
AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: For Women Behind Bars, "Health Care" Can Be Deadly
No comments:
Post a Comment