Published in LiP Magazine
[http://www.lipmagazine.org]

View the full version of this article on the LiP website

Review Essay:

GENDER AND INCARCERATION:
How Men and Women Experience Life Behind Bars

by Silja J.A. Talvi
11.19.01

The new anthology, Prison Masculinities, brings the stress-inducing and often dangerous atmosphere in men's prisons to the written page. Real, raw, and uncensored, Prison Masculinities has already become a crucial addition to the list of prison-related books which seek to expand our understanding of the circumstances surrounding the exorbitant rates of nationwide incarceration, as well as the complex phenomenon of male violence and sexuality in prison.

The theme that binds this impressive collection together is one which has been largely absent from existing analysis of the U.S. prison system: an examination of the role of prison as a patriarchal and hypermasculine institution, and the role played by prisons in reproducing destructive forms of masculinity.

Edited by D'Youville College social sciences professor Don Sabo, psychiatrist Terry A. Kupers, and prisoner/writer Willie London, Prison Masculinities brings together 40 thought-provoking essays and poems written by prisoners, academicians and activists from across the U.S, all with a focus on men behind bars.

Why men? As noted by Marc Mauer in his essay, "Crime, Politics and Community," 94% of the nation's prisoners are men, with an average age of 20.

"The dramatic rate of growth in the prison population has led some to speculate that prisons have now become a means of dealing with a 'surplus population' of men for whom there is no room in the changing economy," writes Mauer.

Mauer makes good use of research conducted by Professors Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett, who have examined the correlations between incarceration and the job market. Their research has pointed out, for instance, that taking imprisonment into account in national statistics adds at least a few points to unemployment rate overall, and nearly doubles the rate of unemployment for African American men.

For incarcerated men, prison accentuates what the editors refer to as "hegemonic masculinity," revolving around male dominance, heterosexism, whiteness, violence and ruthless competition, while prisons themselves demonstrate what the editors define as the four cornerstones of patriarchal institutions: homosociality, sex segregation, hierarchy and violence.

Within this framework, the editors offer valuable insight into the "prison code" as they say it exists nearly universally in American male prisons: Never admit fear. Do not snitch. Act tough. Do not help authorities. Do not trust anyone. Always be ready to fight. As the editors point out, it is a code that is shared by prisoners and guards alike. Within the ranks of prison guards, virtually all the same 'values' are prized. Moreover, explain the editors, some members of prison staff may use the code to enforce order—tolerating sexual domination between prisoners, for instance, "because it serves to divide them into perpetrators and victims, thus diminishing the likelihood of united resistance."

Angela Y. Davis' sagacious analysis in her essay, "Race, Gender, and Prison History," is one of the book's highlights, particularly as she frames the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans in an important historical context, as a kind of bizarre successor to slavery and the convict-leasing system of the late nineteenth century. Davis calls for cooperative work between anti-racist and prison activists, arguing that the two movements are—or should be—inseparable.

Many poems and essays in Prison Masculinities specifically delve into the alarmingly prevalent phenomenon of prison rape. In essays including Kupers' "Rape and the Prison Code," "The Story of a Black Punk," and Stephen Donaldson's "A Million Jockers, Punks and Queens," the authors explore, with absolute honesty, the harsh reality of sexual relations and domination within men's prisons, which often relegates men into roles of jockers (dominant men), punks (the largely heterosexual men pressed into sexual servitude) and queens (a small and highly desirable class of effeminate gays).

Essays such as these do not make for easy or casual reading; the horror of sexual violence behind prison walls is communicated with startling and disturbing detail, but the passages are delivered with intelligence and a brutal frankness.

Other notable contributions include Christian Parenti's "Rehabilitating Prison Labor" and Mumia Abu-Jamal's "Caged and Celibate." The book's most powerful personal essay comes from a prisoner at San Quentin, Jarvis Masters, who sets out to talk to his fellow prisoners about child abuse in a piece entitled "Scars."

Most prisoners, as Masters knows, won't even allow themselves to use the term "child abuse," but the author uses the scars on the bodies of his fellow prisoners as a kind of ice-breaker to get the men talking about their early victimization. The stories that unfold—tales of severe beatings and whippings—shine a new light on the hardened expressions and muscular bodies of San Quentin's toughest prisoners. With superb and shocking insight, Masters relates the experiences of these men as victims of severe childhood abuse to their existence within the prisons that house them:

"Secretly, we all like it here. This place welcomes a man who is full of rage and violence. Here he is not abnormal or perceived as different. Here rage is nothing new, and for men scarred by child abuse and violent lives, the prison is an extension of inner life. We learn to abuse and reabuse ourselves by moving in and out of places like San Quentin."

Voices like these are a crucial and welcome addition to the mounting chorus of dissent against the modern American prison industrial complex. As Masters' essay elucidates, the scars of child abuse and adult imprisonment run deep, and a critical discussion about crime and imprisonment must, by definition, include the perspectives of men who are trapped within a system which all too often serves to bolster feelings of anger, alienation and, most commonly, an underlying sense of self-loathing.

Or, when viewed as thoroughly one-dimensional characters, women in prison become the stuff of projected fantasies and B movies—caged, wild women who are living a kind of fierce, craven lesbian existence.

Books about the real experiences of women prisoners are few and far between. Even rarer are books exploring counseling and treatment techniques for this little-understood and ethnically diverse population of prisoners. The roughly 164,000 women in prisons and jails nationwide present the criminal justice system with multifarious issues

In her book, Counseling Female Offenders and Victims, University of Northern Iowa Professor Katherine van Wormer takes an important new step in the direction of addressing many of those issues from the framework of a "strengths-restorative" approach.

Central to van Wormer's intriguing book is the question of how the criminal justice system can be reconceptualized "to address the needs of victims of violence, sexual and otherwise, [and] of offenders who often themselves are victims of abuse."

The dual-pronged approach toward attaining more effective, compassionate treatment/intervention strategies for female victims as well as offenders is, in and of itself, a unique step. A basic assumption of van Wormer's book is that there is no clear cut difference between female victims and offenders.

Van Wormer's points are well-taken. Based on surveys of numerous federal and scientific studies, the author notes the similarities in the life experiences of many female victims and offenders: the linkages between early child abuse and later victimization by partners or strangers, between sexual abuse and teenage pregnancy, depression and drug abuse, and so on.

In the first half of the book, van Wormer leads readers on what could be likened to a coherent crash course on feminist theories of the experiences of victimized women, including short studies of the issues of partner abuse, rape and incest, as well as analyses of the intersections of ethnicity, gender and class.

As a text more geared toward an academic audience, van Wormer's heavy use of such terminology as "strengths-restorative"—along with the attendant concepts of "paradigm shifts" and "non-dichotomous thinking"—do not always make for smooth reading for those without solid backgrounds in social work or feminist studies.

But for readers willing to wade through the terminology, van Wormer's emphasis on the "strengths-restorative" approach is intriguing.

In essence, van Wormer argues that a belief in human potential and an emphasis through counseling on a person's individual strengths will allow both victim and offender alike to gain the personal power necessary to overcome the forms of abuse that they have endured.

Restorative justice, explains the author, "offers a strong antidote to the political ranting and raving that seems to get votes. In bringing criminal and victim together to heal the wounds of violation, the campaign for restorative justice advocates alternative methods to incarceration when the offender's behavior can be controlled through close supervision."

In her studies of American, Canadian, Scandinavian and other European models, van Wormer highlights programs that include reconciliation programs, culturally-specific healing ceremonies, mediation and community diversion programs.

But what of the fact that so many of the "offenses" for which women (and men) are locked up are victimless, drug-use-related crimes? It's not a point lost on van Wormer who notes that crime is a "socially constructed category, and often says more about the society's values and traditions, even its hang-ups, than about the individuals whose behavior is defined as criminal."

"In other words," she writes, "society gets the criminal it creates."

After outlining a host of pressing problems facing women behind bars—most notably the hiring of men in women's prisons and the increasingly abusive treatment of female prisoners by female guards—van Wormer turns toward a vision of how the counseling of female prisoners could evolve into a cost-effective alternative to lengthy sentencing and unreasonably harsh conditions of incarceration.

The advantages of a feminist-based strengths approach, explains van Wormer, is that it is realistic—"acknowledging societal stress and a woman's resilience at the same time."

Van Wormer presents a five-stage "empowerment model," built on the steps of effective dialogue between prisoner and counselor; awareness of life history and goal setting; motivation and feeling work geared toward behavior change; healing (including the prospect of reconciliation); and "generativity."

It is only the latter concept that van Wormer fails to describe in any great depth; readers are left only with a vague sense that it relates to "the act of generating or bringing into existence."

What van Wormer seems to be reaching for with the concept of "generativity" is that in order to live and to eventually rejoin their communities, women (and men) in prison must be given mechanisms by which they can reclaim a sense of belonging and importance in the greater scheme of things.

Any goal short of this seems determined to allow both men and women to repeat the common, vicious cycle of abuse, mental illness and/or drug abuse, crime and incarceration.

It is a cycle for which the United States has already earned worldwide notoriety, and it is a cycle that the authors of these two important books are devoted to breaking.

Surely, they seem to be saying, we can do better than this.

[ L i P ]

EMAIL THIS ARTICLE TO A FRIEND. CLICK HERE.

Reproduction of material from any LiP pages without written permission is strictly prohibited | Copyright 2002 LiPmagazine.org | info@lipmagazine.org