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NEWS & LETTERS, March 2002
Letter from woman in California prison
Chowchilla, Cal.–When you
invited me to write to you, you said "thoughts develop by sharing them with
others." I find it hard to share my thoughts and feelings about being here
with others—even with those I am close to—because unless you have personally
experienced this, it's hard to relate or understand. For me and other women, I
know the most predominant feeling is the one of powerlessness or helplessness. When you first get locked up,
you are in a sense cutting your close ties with those on the outside, whether it
be spouses, parents, children or friends. Once in here, you find out who does
and who does not have your best interests in mind. (I'm speaking of the people
with ties to our heart on the outside.) A lot of women lose their children to
the system or to their relatives. Some even lose their emotional ties. You may
once have had material possessions, a house, furniture, animals, keepsakes, but
now you are powerless. And what of the closeness you once shared with spouses,
siblings, parents, friends when their whole attitude to you changes. You are
powerless insofar as the outside world is concerned. In here, you have to learn to
live with and get along with many women who come from many different backgrounds
and cultures. You must learn to work out your differences, verbally or
physically. You must learn to live for yourself and for leaving here. And then we have the system,
the correctional officers, the lieutenants, the captains and others. We live in
rooms with eight women to a room. D-yard is mainly for drug offenders. There is
no privacy here, your room is subject to search and seizure at any time. That
means if you have an extra coat or any extra state clothes, they will be taken.
If you happened to borrow a curling iron or hair dryer from someone, and it
doesn't have your name on it, they take it. We have one lieutenant here who
tries to make everyone's life miserable on our yard. Surprise inspections, no
smoking coming back from chow, no makeup allowed going to the yard. If any of
the correctional officers have allowed the unit to become lax, he will make sure
the strictest of rules are applied so everyone feels uncomfortable. You know
that he is such a miserable person himself that his goal in life must be to make
the women on D-yard miserable, too. The most important and vital
problem here is the medical help we receive. A doctor at Chowchilla women's
prison was charged with sexually molesting two inmates during medical exams. He
is,. of course, denying the charges and has been put on paid administrative
leave. But it's not only a case like this. It's the lack of an adequate medical
staff and the ignorance they reveal. Or maybe it's that they just
don't care that women are not being cared for properly. It's not just little
things. There are women in here with cancer, hepatitis, grand mal seizures, and
other serious conditions who are simply not being given the proper medical
attention. Their conditions are just left to drag on and on. I'm going to try to get other women in here to write to you with their thoughts, too. Sharing them with others is difficult, but it is important to us to know that someone is listening. |
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