Martha’s Free, But What About the Others?
It’s not every day that the release of a prisoner makes the headlines. Most leave quietly out the front gate with some small pocket change and if they are lucky someone will be there to pick them up. Not so with Martha Stewart. The day before she was released, a story appeared about various people who live in the town where she was confined and how they were “saying goodbye to its favorite convicted felon” complete “with Martha Stewart Swedish Meatballs cooking at the Dinner Bell restaurant and T-shirts and mugs commemorating the homemaking authority's involuntary visit.” (“In West Virginia, Townspeople Await Martha Stewart's Release From Prison,” Associated Press, March 3, 2005).
The story continues, noting that since Stewart starting doing her time on October 8 of last year, “the town has seen a long line of Stewart supporters, celebrity friends and the just-plain-curious make the 12-mile drive off the interstate to see where she spent five months locked up for her part in a stock scandal.” Not surprisingly, there was profit to be made from having such a celebrity in the local prison. The article notes that one local business woman has sold more than 1,300 “West Virginia Living, It's a Good Thing,” T-shirts (borrowing Stewart’s line, “It’s a good thing”), saying that “the town needed the economic boost Stewart's celebrity provided.”
While in prison Ms. Stewart wrote occasionally about her fellow prisoners, noting at one point that “The judges, the lawyers and the prosecutors do not really know what its like” to be incarcerated. “They do not know that time passes slowly, there are no good educational opportunities, there is little of value with which to pass the time.”
How nice it is that someone cares about women in prison. As I have noted on this web site (http://www.sheldensays.com/Gender_responsive_strategies.htm) women in prison do not fare too well. The statistics tell a sorry tale about the effects on women of the “get tough” on crime movement, especially the “war on drugs.” Currently about one-third of all women offenders are in prison for drug crimes, compared to a mere 1 in 8 back in 1986. Women have been the fastest growing population within the nation’s prison systems. At the end of 2003 (the latest figures available), there were 101,179 women in prison, compared to 68,468 in 1986 – a jump of 48%. The number of male prisoners went up by 29% during the same period. Women’s incarceration rate went from 47 (per 100,000) to 62 during the same period. To put things into historical perspective, from the 1920s to the 1970s the incarceration rate for women averaged around 8.
What has caused such a huge increase is mostly the drug war. Criminologist Barbara Owen notes that between 1986 and 1995, “the number of women incarcerated for drug offenses rose an amazing 888 per cent,” compared to a 129% increase for other crimes. Owen notes that such a difference “is particularly marked in states with serious penalties for drug offenses,” such as New York, where “the notorious Rockefeller drug laws account for 91 per cent of the women's prison population increase; in California, drug offenses account for 55 per cent.” Presently “the most serious offense for 72% of women in federal prisons and 30.4% of women in state prisons is violation of drug laws” (http://www.drugwarfacts.org/women.htm).
The federal prison system as a whole has seen boom times in recent decades, mostly to handle all the drug offenders convicted in federal courts. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has noted on its web site that because of recent changes in federal law enforcement efforts plus new legislation (e.g., drug laws, mandatory sentencing, etc) has caused a significant increase in the number of Federal inmates. “The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 established determinate sentencing, abolished parole, and reduced good time; additionally, several mandatory minimum sentencing provisions were enacted in 1986, 1988, and 1990. From 1980 to 1989, the inmate population more than doubled, from just over 24,000 to almost 58,000. During the 1990s, the population more than doubled again, reaching approximately 136,000 at the end of 1999 as efforts to combat illegal drugs and illegal immigration contributed to significantly increased conviction rates.” (Their web site is: http://www.bop.gov/about/index.jsp)
The Federal Bureau of Prisons was established in 1930 and in 1940 there were 24 facilities with 24,360 inmates. With some minor fluctuations, the number of inmates remained around the same and in 1980 there were 24,252. Largely because of the drug war, the number of facilities almost doubled (from 24 to 44) by 1999. The number of people working within the federal prison system also increased dramatically, going from about 10,000 in 1980 to 34,000 as of June, 2003.
Typical of other prisons, the place where Martha Stewart called home was the first federal prison for women, a minimum-security institution located in tiny Alderson, West Virginia, population 1091. It is located in a remote area of the state, in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. Most women incarcerated such remote locations do not get many family visitors – more than half of the women in federal prisons have children (this percentage is much higher in state prisons).
Women prisoners in general are completely different from Martha Stewart. Barbara Owen puts it well, saying that the background context of these women “is informed by the three central issues shape the lives of women prior to imprisonment: multiplicity of abuse in their pre-prison lives; disrupted family and personal relationships, particularly those relating to male partners and children; and drug use. Given this background, spiraling marginality and subsequent criminality is a common result. Combined with a public policy that criminalizes drug-using behavior, the outcome is ever-increasing rates of imprisonment for women.”
Upon leaving prison, Martha Stewart wrote the following words on her website: http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jhtml?type=learn-cat&id=cat19737&rsc=sc220203
The experience of the last five months in Alderson, West Virginia has been life altering and life affirming. Someday, I hope to have the chance to talk more about all that has happened, the extraordinary people I have met here and all that I have learned. I can tell you now that I feel very fortunate to have had a family that nurtured me, the advantage of an excellent education, and the opportunity to pursue the American dream. You can be sure that I will never forget the friends that I met here, all that they have done to help me over these five months, their children, and the stories they have told me. Right now, as you can imagine, I am thrilled to be returning to my more familiar life. My heart is filled with joy at the prospect of the warm embraces of my family, friends and colleagues. Certainly, there is no place like home.
One has to wonder what is going through the minds of the other 100,000 plus women who will remain behind bars. My one hope is that with her influence, Martha Stewart can change the minds of some of those responsible for making crime control policies that target mostly poor and minority women. They don’t seem to listen to criminologists.