NCJ Number
91937
Date Published
1983
Length
0 pages
Annotation
This is a slide-tape presentation on women's lives in U.S. jails and prisons, with special emphasis on health conditions.
Abstract
The narration points out that most female inmates of jails and prisons were charged for such violations as drunkenness, writing bad checks, disorderly conduct, and vagrancy. Among the cruelties of the institutional setting is being 'stripped of all identification of being a woman,' but inmates' most painful experience is separation from their children, whose foster placements may later cause the mother legal custody problems and charges of 'child neglect' during her imprisonment. Correctional rehabilitation programs do not meet the interests of the female inmates, offering menial, unskilled work under degrading conditions and low pay. Serious health problems may arise from prison routines such as body cavity searches, forced medication, denial of exercise or sunlight, poor diet, low quality health care, physical and mental abuse, and intentional neglect. If a woman is in good health upon incarceration, she will have a very hard time maintaining it inside the prison. However, most women (72 percent) coming into prison suffer health ailments common to people from lower socioeconomic and minority backgrounds. The most frequently observed problems are drug addiction, psychiatric illness, hypertension, and respiratory ailments. Inmates are completely dependent on the prison medical system, whose services are perfunctory and superficial, without followup care or accurate recordkeeping. Often, medical attention is denied if an inmate complains of an ailment without emergency symptoms. Immediate changes should be instituted to end forced pelvic exams and use of psychotropic drugs to restrain inmates. Institutions should guarantee access to quality medical care and sanitary living conditions.