I. Conclusions
In thinking about potential remedies for media depictions of race, poverty, and crime, one can easily become pessimistic about any hope of progress because the negative images of people of color are so deeply ingrained in our social fabric. Indeed, Derrick Bell’s notion of the “permanence of racism” in American culture has an uneasy ring of truth, notwithstanding the fact that there are some small, identifiable examples of progress.
In the entertainment industry, there are a few glimmers of hope. At one time, the number of movie directors who were people of color was so small as to make these directors a novelty. While their numbers are nowhere near what they should be, many directors of color are more established and now have the opportunity to paint pictures of characters of color that are less stereotypical and refreshingly different from historical representations. Taking people of color, particularly African American actors, out of the stereotypical roles of pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, and police informants also helps. The African American media purchasing dollar is very strong. Advertising aimed at people of color during sporting events, targeted television programs, and movies confirms this fact. Movies that focus on audiences of color do well at the box office. In the future, coordinated efforts to lobby movie companies to create more balanced scripts, taking people of color and putting them in different situations, will continue this positive trend. Urging news writers, producers, and outlets to focus on the quantity and quality of their coverage in communities of color will also help in developing more accurate portrayals of what is actually going on in these communities.
Unfortunately, none of these remedies is totally satisfying. If you live in, work in, or are concerned with communities of color, it seems there is little hope that current policies will change in the near future. Journalists, television and movie writers, producers, and corporate advertisers have no vested interest in turning from their established operating procedures. There is no constituency to influence them, no government incentive to lure them toward the truth.
3
Women
The Afterthought in Reentry Planning
LaDonna Cissell is a single mother of three who grew up on the east side of Indianapolis. She became pregnant with her first child at fourteen and never completed school. She was incarcerated after cashing a series of counterfeit checks worth about forty-five hundred dollars. Sometimes she cashed as many as four a day, spending the money on clothing, meals, and cars. Her crimes were nonviolent. Nationally, about 50 percent of the total crimes committed by women are nonviolent. Cissell describes her time in custody as the “worst six months of my life.” She points out that her mother did not want to bring her children to see her while she was locked up and that the separation was hard on both her and her children. Her experience is not unlike that of many women who interact with the criminal justice system.1
Women have unique experiences arriving in, getting through, and recovering from the criminal justice experience. Women continue to be the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. prison population, and they bring a unique set of problems into the criminal justice system. According to a Rocky Mountain News story on women in recovery:
Women are more likely than men to be addicted to more than one mood altering substance, and many addicted women report that they began using drugs after a specific traumatic event in their lives. Among women problem drug users, 35% report major depressive episodes vs. 9% of other women. Women represent 43% of clients in methamphetamine treatment, 40% of clients in cocaine treatment, 34% of those in heroin treatment and 26% of those in marijuana treatment. Moreover, about 80% of Miracle’s women have some kind of mental illness. Nearly all of them have been victims of abuse, sexual, physical, emotional, much of it in childhood. Many women do not seek treatment for fear of losing custody of their children. Treatment is complicated by the need for child care, transportation and financial assistance.2
LaDonna Cissell’s story, noted at the beginning of this chaper, is not unlike many contemporary stories of women attempting to complete the difficult task of reentry.
Even a cursory examination of the hurdles that women typically encounter—both in prison and upon release—reveals the limitations of a penal system built to house male offenders. To the extent that policy makers have focused on prison programming or reentry planning, they have generally relegated issues faced by women to the margins. Women have entered prison with a wide range of problems and related needs but have been the beneficiaries of few meaningful interventions. At the point of release, it is not uncommon for women leaving prison suffering from disabilities to find out that their condition is often more acute due to a lack of focused attention. When we add to that common foundation a frequent lack of support to ease the transition back into their communities, it is no surprise that reentry for women has been as much a dismal failure as for their male counterparts.
A common misperception may begin to explain this phenomenon. Conventional wisdom suggests that criminal conduct of women constitutes such a small proportion of crimes that it need not garner much attention. Compared to men, women do represent a smaller percentage of individuals reentering communities from prison and jail. However, their numbers are rising at a much higher rate than those of men. This steady climb in the number of women offenders can be attributed to a host of factors. Some have suggested that women are engaging in increasingly more serious criminal conduct that more often exposes them to prison terms.3 Others counter that women have not become more criminally active; instead, they have simply been caught up in the fervor to sweep more people into the criminal justice system.4 A range of arrest policies for everything from domestic violence to drugs is one reason why more women are coming to the attention of criminal justice officials. Competing explanations aside, the number of women in U.S. prisons has “quintupled since 1980.”5
One phenomenon I have observed in the massive overincarceration of women in the last two decades is the casting of a wider law enforcement net. In my experience and observations, women have been incarcerated more often for nonviolent, drug-related or drug-involved crimes (i.e., crimes committed to obtain resources for drugs or allegedly done in concert with male offenders where the woman is marginally—if at all—involved in criminal conduct). From the law enforcement standpoint, arresting and charging these women offers prosecutors an improved chance to prove the case against other individuals charged in the case. By turning the woman into a cooperating witness, prosecutors strengthen their case against the more serious male offender. In the mind of many in law enforcement, these women deserve no special consideration. Those who have children are perceived as bad parents who should not be raising children. Consequently, there is no hesitation to plunge them into the criminal justice system.
The profile of the average woman in custody is a woman of color in her early thirties with more than one child under the age of eighteen. She is in custody on a drug or property offense and was unemployed or underemployed when she was sentenced. Of course, not all women in custody fit this profile. However, statistically, women are more often incarcerated for nonviolent property or drug crimes. Although some of these trends are beginning to shift, we need only look to some of the policy decisions made in the last two decades of the twentieth century to explore the reasons women are finding themselves in custody in unprecedented