Blog #15

Britton describes that prisons have existed in the U.S. for so many decades that they have come to be seemed as normal. The first American prison opened in 1785 and the structure was designed with the male prisoner in mind because women constituted only a minority of prisoners. To this date, women are still greatly outnumbered in prison compared to their male counterparts however one similarity that holds true between both male and female prisoners is that they are disproportionately composed of minorities. According to Britton’s statistics, women in prison are 35% white, 46% Black and 16% Hispanic and further finds that Blacks are seven times more likely to be incarcerated than are whites. In addition, for both men and women prisoners, they are more likely to represent working or workless poor.
Historically, prisons were referred to as penitentiaries because they were considered places where “the errant might repent and be transformed” however that was not necessarily the case for women as Criminologist, Francis Leiber suggested that a woman who commits a crime has sunken deeper than a man and therefore when it came to incarcerating them, they were forced to live in miserable conditions. Britton describes the situation for women in prison as an afterthought given the lack of attention, supervision and protection. And even in the prisons, their roles were systematically reinforced by only permitting them to do things like knitting, sewing or cooking.
In Arizona, the first female promoted to sergeant was in 1979, that is only thirty years ago when the legislator proposed that a prison be built back in 1868. Although we do see more women in correctional officer positions, they are more likely to be placed in female and juvenile institutions. Primarily, Britton cites that it is “the masculine foundation on which the system of penitentiary discipline was built also contributed to the exclusion of women from its regimes.” Again, because the prison system was originally designed for men to be supervised by men, when women were accused and punished for moral shortcomings, prison staff perceived them to be a “nuisance.” Today, reformers have brought changes and improvements for female prisoners however based on some recent events such as the deceased Perryville prisoner due to negligent acts of correctional officers, it is clear that there is still an urgent need to change policies to ensure that prisoners do NOT lose their right to be treated like humans.