Saxakali Magazine V2N2
Social
Issues:
Drugs, Minority Women
and the US Prison Economy
Women, caribbean immigrants and other minority communities are subject to drug laws that are biased against them so that they form an over-represented group in prisons of the usa. For example, the five years between 1986 to 1991 experienced a 430 percent increase in the number of african american women locked down. From 1991 to 1995, the african american women’s prison population increased 828 percent in just four years. These figures are alarming in themselves, but magnified when one considers that the rate of incarceration of minority females is almost double that of african american males imprisoned during the past decade (see box, "Crimes Against Minority Communities").
This increase of minority women in the us industrial prison complex can be traced to many causes. First of all, most of the women imprisoned are not actually criminals, but become defined as such in a blatantly racist legal system which contain penal institutions like the death penalty and other unfair sentencing laws, police brutality, and frame ups of political activists like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and other brothers and sisters in prison or on probation.
The criminalization of minority women (and men) is also directly linked to the introduction of crack into minority neighborhoods in 1985, along with a mainstream media hysteria campaign to drum up support for draconian 500-to-1 crack laws passed by congress and the president in the "Sentencing Report of Crack" in 1987.
If arrested in alleged possession of a mere five grams of crack (smaller than a thumb nail with a street value of $50) minorities are subjected to the same mandatory five years in jail as someone caught with 500 grams worth of powdered cocaine (with a street value of $50,000). When this law was passed, there were widespread protests in many prisons by prisoners. This was in recognition of the fact that crack is the reason why 90 percent of african american women and men are in prison.
Crack is a slang phrase used by minority youth to describe the sound made in the simple process of boiling powder cocaine to make a solid, smokeable form of cocaine. The word crack became politicized and institutionalized as a legal term in a racist system which targets communities of color for incarceration.
Felony laws are part of this racist system. Felony offenses are considered federal crimes and are subject to extreme mandatory sentencing laws. Alleged possession of $20 worth of crack is considered a felony and first time "offenders" face sentencing of one to three years in jail. With this law, being a "crack-head" makes one a federal criminal, even if one is the elected mayor of Washington, DC.
Those charged a second time with a felony are subjected to mandatory sentencing for five years. The second felony law applies to those who are allegedly in possession of $20 worth of crack ten years after their first conviction. This means that if a minority woman goes nine and a half years without doing anything and is then alleged to be in possession of $20 worth of crack - the felony laws require mandatory sentencing for her. Basically, a minority woman can get a total of eight years in jail for alleged possession of a mere $40 worth of crack over a period of ten years.
African americans represent 12% of the population, but account for over 35 percent of those arrested for alleged possession of "illegal" drugs. Clearly, this figure indicates that many minorities are targeted as drug users. The reality that african americans represent a full 75 percent of those convicted and sentenced for drug related offenses attests to the level of class and racial oppression minority communities face.
Drug use can be addictive and harmful to one’s health, however the criminalization of drug use among people of color has added more to the devastation of minority communities than drug use alone. Recognizing this fact, the former Surgeon General, Dr. Jocelyn Elders, in her role as the highest health administrator, and an african american woman, publicly supported the legalization of certain drugs. She knew that she would be fired for her actions, however her insight into the issues required her to do just that.
Her call for the legalization of drug use was quite a departure from the usual moralizing and victim-blaming that goes on within minority communities, an attitude which mirrors mainstream ideology of drug use (and not access) as the main cause of violence and other harmful consequences associated with illegal drugs. Her brave action and powerful message was also addressed to people of color - to organize and take back their communities from the subjugation of racist laws.
Crack, although highly addictive, is not as violent in its effects as the potent malt liquors (equivalent to five shots of whiskey) aggressively marketed in minority communities. Legal alcohol use results in many deaths in all communities. Studies show that in over 50 percent of reported homicides, the parties involved had alcohol in their blood.
The criminalization of drug use is also class related. For example, privileged middle class communities and legal drug pushers or doctors, have access to the use of mind altering pharmaceuticals (anti-depressants, sedatives, etc.), and the use of powdered cocaine with less severe sentencing laws than crack. This occurs while the sale of cannabis and crack are criminalized among working class users. Drug and alcohol dependency is prevalent among each class, race and gender. The state does not consider drunks as federal criminals, or people on prozac. Why are only crack heads felons? Who distributes the legal and illegal cocaine in the ghettos (hint: its not african americans)?
Criminalization of poor women of color is related to issues surrounding the demonization of african american females, the feminization of poverty, domestic violence, other forms of violence, and so on. They are subjected to disparaging racist and sexist stereotypes, e.g., they are single, obsolete and dangerous; and as single mothers, they are raising a generation of crack babies and youths out of control, etc.
Poor women of color are often compelled to turn to the informal drug economy as part of family and community survival strategies. Whether they have relationships with illegal drug users, or with family members who are dealers, or as dealers themselves, minority women are targeted for imprisonment by racist drug laws. Even if minority women are occasional users of drugs like crack, they are treated as major drug dealers and federal criminals.
Almost 80 percent of minority women in the prison system are mothers and one wonders what happens to their children and families. It is difficult for children, especially young children, to visit their mothers. Family relationships are disrupted and children may be placed in foster homes or where a cycle of abuse and poverty leads to their own incarceration. From one generation to the next, whole families serve time in lock down - mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.
The humiliating and violent treatment inflicted upon the captive prison population is widely known. Women of color face sexual and physical assault during arrest and while locked down by racist correction officers, ninety percent of whom are white. There are frequent strip searches and double celling in which two women have to share the space for barely one person. With the move towards privatization of prisons, public accountability for the abuses routinely inflicted on women inmates will be reduced even more as commercial enterprises are not subject to freedom of information laws.
Another coincidental factor for the increase in the minority women in jail is the privatization of prisons and the contracting out of prison labor to private corporations as a form of slavery and slave wages are reinstituted in america (see box, "The US Prison Economy"). Women in prison are paid 15 to 30 cents an hour (minimum wage is $4.25 in NY), or $25 to $50 a month for 40 hours of work.
Female juveniles are now forced to work a 40-hour week because they are being tried as adults. In civil society, these children would not be allowed to work a 40-hour work week, due to prohibition against child labor. They are not allowed to buy tobacco or alcohol due to their age but they are aggressively targeted by these corporate interests, other legal drug pushers. Yet, the state is now persecuting and prosecuting them as adults and they are forced to work as adults. This is not only child labor but slave labor, clearly.
About 85 percent of visitors to prisons are female relatives of inmates, who often have to spend their own meager economic resources to provide basic items to their captive kin and friends - food, cigarettes, music cassettes, magazines, etc. Poor folks have to find the money for travel, food, etc., to visit relatives in upstate prison facilities hundreds of miles away from the ghetto.
However, that’s not all. Washington state now has the 2010 Bill in effect which allows the state to take 35 percent of all monies coming in to the prison from inmates’ families or friends. This is to pay for housing, clothing, food and crime-victims’ fund. This law shows the extent of the slavery system being constructed in prisons and our communities.
Working class minority women face discrimination (in and out of prison) in access to health services, education, employment, job-training, and housing - based on their race, gender and class. The few jobs available in ghettos give below-poverty wages. This pernicious cycle of poverty in the ghetto contributes to depression and drug dependency. In addition, minority women and children are often abused as a result of domestic violence inflicted on them by minority men (see box, "Domestic Violence and Minority Communities"). Minority women are triply oppressed, but if they choose to escape their oppression, and the depression caused by their oppressors, through common street drugs, they are jailed.
As newer caribbean and asian immigrant minority communities are forced into the ghettos, their children, (girls and boys), also become caught up in the racist strategies used by the police/authoritarian state to maintain white hegemony by incarcerating people of color. Admittedly, there is a growing number of working class white females (and males) who are experiencing some of the very issues explored here. However, their oppression, based on class and gender, is not subject to a historically and legally racist system.
This discourse of race, sex and class began in the context of slavery where women of color were treated as chattel or animals, and sexually exploited by white males as part of a strategy to oppress "minority" populations. The resistance of native american, african american, latina, chicana, arabic, asian and other women, in light of their multiple oppressions, is nothing short of heroic. It is they who bear and raise children, keep families together, work and provide for the family’s survival needs, and build communities of color under siege.
Yet, the voices of women of color are missing in minority discourses, which view the liberation of communities of color mainly in terms of the liberation of the minority male. Their voices are also absent in mainstream feminist discourse, which is biased towards and dominated by middle-class, white women’s values and issues. The fact that these women continue to resist, even in prison, should serve to inspire us all.
This article is based on a talk, "Blacks and the Prison Economy" by Leroy Jordon at the African Poetry Theater (Ph: (718) 523-3312]
(The African Egyptian civilization applied the justice of scales to social and legal life at least as early as the Middle Kingdom (1500 BC)
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1996. [Saxakali]. All rights reserved.