![]() ![]() And imagine being there for fifteen years. I think that’s a fairly good analogy of what happens. There’s the ever-present threat of violence or further repression if you don’t toe the line. MB: Imagine yourself in a relationship with an abuser who controls your every move, keeps you locked in the house. SD: How do you think these last fifteen years have affected you, personally? We found many more women with those kinds of sentences. Or there’s our friend Danielle, who has a triple-life sentence for another drug conspiracy-her crime was basically refusing to testify against her husband. This was a drug conspiracy case where it was really her husband who had run this drug ring, and she was swept up in the indictment. By then, my cellmate had a twenty-four-year sentence on a first offense. In 1990, when I ended up with twenty-three years, people were less astounded, because the laws had changed and sentences were much longer. In 1985, when people heard that I was facing thirty-three years, they were astounded. The other thing is the federal conspiracy laws, which are particularly pernicious for women. The overcrowding means that people are treated like problems and like baggage. Marilyn Buck, like many prisoners who fight very hard to get an education, has to sit on a cot and write on her lap. Little by little, they took away any clothing that was sent to you, and put down much more stringent requirements. It means you have no property, because there’s no room. What that means to someone like Marilyn is tremendous overcrowding: you’re living the rest of your life in a tiny cell that was built for one person and now houses three. When we look at the two million people now in the federal and state systems, the proportion of women in those numbers has gone way up. LW: I think it’s typical of Marilyn not to complain in an interview about her own conditions. People are detained for years without ever being given any kind of judicial decision. Not just immigrants but foreign nationals, who’ve been arrested for incidents in crossing borders. There’s a much higher percentage of blacks and Latinos, and-at least in the Federal system-an enormous number of immigrants. The balance of who is in prison has also changed. And certainly Clinton played a big role with the Anti-Terrorism Act, which further limited people’s legal rights. MB: They’ve become much more repressive, particularly since Ronald Reagan’s presidency. How have prison conditions around you changed over those years? SD: You both were arrested and imprisoned in 1985. After reading Marilyn’s words-and having known and lived beside Marilyn for years in prison-Laura added to what Marilyn wasn’t able to say, as well as expressing her own experience and recollections. While it was possible to talk to Laura at length about her time behind bars, Marilyn was able only to make four long-distance phone calls, each summarily cut off by the prison after fifteen minutes. Mutulu Shakur and Sekou Odinga, both also incarcerated in federal prisons.) (Her codefendants on that case include Dr. She is serving a total sentence of eighty years and remains in the Dublin California Federal Correctional Facility. Marilyn Buck, Laura’s friend and codefendant, was also convicted for her alleged role in the 1979 prison escape of Assata Shakur, and a number of armored car expropriations in support of the Black Liberation Army. foreign policy (the “Resistance Conspiracy” case). Capitol building, to protest police brutality and U.S. Laura Whitehorn, released in 1999, served over fourteen years behind bars for a series of property bombings, including one of the U.S. Here are the voices and observations of two women political prisoners. And we never hear from women incarcerated for their political actions. However, we seldom hear from these women themselves. Amnesty International-long known for ignoring human rights abuses inside United States prisons and jails-issued a report, two days shy of International Women’s Day 2001, documenting over 1,000 cases of sexual abuse of U.S. ![]() Media accounts of overcrowding, lengthening sentences, and horrendous medical care in women’s prisons appear regularly. After years of neglect, the issue of women in prison has begun to receive attention in this country. ![]()
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