The Nashville Feminist Collective is interested in the implications of the prison industrial complex (PIC) for feminism(s). Recognizing that the terrain of the feminist movement is multiple and contested, as a group, we seek to deepen our understanding of what has been termed “carceral feminism,” an approach that sees the criminal legal system as the primary “solution” to gender-based violence. As Beth Richie documents in Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation (2012), such an investment has left many women, particularly Black women in low-income communities, more vulnerable to interpersonal and state violence. The collaboration between the mainstream feminist anti-violence movement and the criminal legal system has also fed into the unprecedented expansion of the prison system, in which women and girls are the fastest growing population and women of color, trans and queer folks are disproportionately represented. This reading group will look at the implications of carceral feminism for Nashville and the nation and explore transformative justice-based alternatives.
Join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/feminisminaprisonnation
A NOTE ON LANGUAGE
We invite everyone to use “people first” language in place of the terms “inmate,” “offender,” “criminal,” “convict,” and “felon” by referring to “people who are (formerly) incarcerated,” “people who have a criminal conviction,” etc., even when the readings do not. (See “Names Do Hurt: The Case Against Using Derogatory Language to Describe People in Prison” by Victoria Law and Rachel Roth).
TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE AS AN ALTERNATIVE
Addressing Harm, Accountability, and Healing Resource List (Critical Resistance)
Community & Allyship-Feminist Action Support Network (FASN)
Creative Interventions
generationFIVE Perpetrator Accountability-FASN
Philly Stands Up!
Project NIA
StoryTelling & Organizing Project (STOP)
LOCAL CAMPAIGNS OF INTEREST
Ban the Box Nashville - An initiative to reduce barriers to employment for persons with criminal convictions in Nashville by removing the box on Metro job applications asking about criminal history. For more information visit: https://democracynashville.wordpress.com/.
Health Care Not Handcuffs - A campaign to decriminalize pregnancy outcomes in Tennessee. In 2014, SB 1391 was enacted amending Tennessee’s fetal homicide law to include prosecution for the illegal use of a narcotic during pregnancy if the child is born harmed or addicted to the drug, despite opposition by medical professionals. In 2015, an attempt to expand the law to include meth, failed. The law expires on July 1, 2016. For more information see: http://data.rhrealitycheck.org/law/tennessee-pregnancy-criminalization-law-sb-1391, http://healthyandfreetn.org/campaigns, and http://sisterreach.org.
MEETING INFORMATION & READINGS
**NOTE: Readings are generally 30 pages or fewer. You do not have to do the readings to attend the discussion group.**
November 8, 2015
Join us as we take a look at race, gender and mental health in jails and prisons. In advance, participants are asked to Wview Frontline’s “The New Asylums” (60 minutes) and read “Women in Prison Need and Want Treatment for Physical, Sexual Abuse” (2 pages), “Women in Prison: An Issue of Blaming the Individual for Social Problems” (2 pages), and “James Gilligan on the Pscyhology and Treatment of Violent Offenders” (17 pages). Facebook event is here.
October 25, 2015
We took a look at the sexual-abuse-to-prison-pipeline for girls, reading: “The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story” by Human Rights Project for Girls (32 pages). Also recommended: “Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline Report: A Native Perspective” (4 pages).
October 11, 2015
The drastic increase in women’s incarceration since 1980 is attributed to the war on drugs. This week we looked at the impact of drug policy on women, reading: “The Impact of Drug Policy on Women” from Open Society Foundations (23 pages) and “Punished for Addiction: Women Prisoners Dying from Lack of Treatment” from RH Reality Check (7 pages). Also recommended: “How America Overdosed on Drug Courts” from Pacific Standard Magazine (9 pages).
September 27, 2015
We continued our cursory look at TN’s fetal assault law in preparation for Healthy & Free TN’s one-day symposium “Pregnancy, Drug Use and the Law” on October 1st, by reading “Into the Body of Another” by Olga Khazan, The Atlantic (May 2015).
September 13, 2015
To prepare ourselves for Healthy & Free TN’s one-day symposium “Pregnancy, Drug Use and the Law” on October 1st, we began reading about reproductive justice and TN’s fetal assault law: “Woman Thrown in Jail for Having an Addiction While Pregnant” by Tana Ganeva and “Making Reproduction a Crime” from Dorothy Roberts’ Killing the Black Body.
August 30, 2015
We viewed and discussed the 2009 documentary “Sin by Silence” (www.sinbysilence.com) which looks at the experiences of battered incarcerated women in the California Institution for Women and their organizing for change. The trailer is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naGlCwdvVx8.
August 16, 2015
We dedicated most of this meeting to mapping the issues that incarcerated women face with plans to later include what is already being done in Nashville and to note the gaps in advocacy, activism, and services. We read “Safe Return: Working Toward Preventing Domestic Violence When Men Return from Prison” (2006) by Bobbit, et al.
August 9, 2015
We looked at domestic violence and failure-to-protect laws, focusing on Tennessee. We read “Battered, Bereaved, and Behind Bars” (BuzzFeed 2014) and about four TN cases in “These Mothers Were Sentenced to at least 10 Years for Failing to Protect their Children from a Violent Partner” (BuzzFeed 2014). For context we looked at TN’s Failure-to-Protect law (chart listing), “Evidence of Battered Woman Syndrome Often Hinders a Victim’s Claim” from “Battered Woman Syndrome: A Tool for Batterers?” (Fordham Law Review, 1995-1996, pp. 179-182), “Tenn. has Stand Your Ground self-defense law” (Real Clear Politics, 2012) and Tennessee’s current self-defense law.
July 26, 2015
We continued our look at self-defense by reading “Real Men Advance, Real Women Retreat: Stand Your Ground, Battered Women’s Syndrome, and Violence as Male Privilege” by Mary Anne Franks (University of Miami Law Review, 2014) and “No Selves to Defend: Poems About Criminalization and Violence Against Women” originally compiled to raise funds for the legal defense of Marissa Alexander.
July 12, 2015
We hosted a film viewing of Out in the Night, followed by a discussion on race, gender, sexuality and self-defense. A synopsis of the film is available on PBS here.
June 28, 2015
The jail and police HQ relocation proposal was defeated (for now)! We focused this week on the challenges women of color who are experiencing domestic violence face in seeking help and read INCITE!-Critical Resistance Statement with an Introduction by Julia Sudbury “Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex: Interpersonal and State Violence Against Women of Color” and “Nashville: Domestic Violence and Incarcerated Women in Poor Black Neighborhoods” by Neil Websdale.
June 7, 2015
We turned away from the jail and police HQ relocation back to the experiences of women with policing and incarceration, looking in particular at Black women’s experiences of state violence and police brutality by reading “#SayHerName: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women” produced by the African American Policy Forum, 20 May 2015.
May 24, 2015
We continued talking about local news regarding the proposed relocation of the CJC and the Metro Police HQ move to Jefferson Street: “Jail plan ‘came as shock’ to southeast Nashville council members” (The Tennessean, 25 April 2015), “Jail Relocation Could Tie Up Metro Budget” (News Channel 5, 19 May 2015). We also read more generally about the importance of language and reasons for challenging the new proposals in “Names Do Hurt: The Case Against Using Derogatory Language to Describe People in Prison” (Law and Roth, April 2015) “A How-to-Guide to Organizing for Alternatives to Jail Expansion in Your Community” (Community Alternatives to Jail Expansion 2006) “Factsheet: Rising Detention and Growth of Local Jails” (Community Alternatives to Jail Expansion 2006) “Why Not in My County? Cost-Effective Solutions to Jail Overcrowding” (Community Alternatives to Jail Expansion 2004) “Organizing the Opposition” (CURB).
May 10, 2015
Given the Mayor’s announcement of plans to build new jail and police facilities in late April, we focused our discussion on jails. We read “The Misuse of Jails in America” (The Vera Institute of Justice, 2015) and for more on the Nashville context we read “The Davidson County jail for females: a modern-day crisis center” (Kummerow and Joyner 2008), “Karl Dean unveils $149M plan for new sheriff, police facilities” (The Tennessean, 21 April 2015) and “With jail plan, neighbors ‘tired’ of not being heard” (The Tennessean, 7 May 2015).
April 12, 2015
For Sexual Assault Awareness Month we read Angela Davis’ (2003) “How Gender Structures the Prison System” (book chapter); we read about a procedure called the “labia lift” (2010) by Krystal Voss for Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance and we read a short selection from “It’s War In Here” (2007) a report on the treatment of transgender and intersex people in NY state men’s prisons from the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.
GLOSSARY
Ableism – According to Lydia Brown, ableism is the “systematic, institutional devaluing of bodies and minds deemed deviant, abnormal, defective, subhuman, less than. Ableism is violence.” For more information see “Glossary of Ableist Phrases” and “12 Words You Need to Ban from Your Vocabulary to Be a Better Ally.”
Accomplice – Defined generally as a person who helps another commit a crime and specifically in the context of social justice by Indigenous Action Media as one who fights “back or forward, together, becoming complicit in a struggle towards liberation.”
Calling In – A strategy outlined by Ngọc Loan Trần as “a less disposable way of holding each other accountable” and offered in more detail by Sian Ferguson.
Carceral Feminism – Feminism that relies on the criminal legal system as the primary “solution” to gender-based violence. See Victoria Law’s “Against Carceral Feminism.”
Community Accountability – defined by Incite! as “a community-based strategy, rather than a police/prison-based strategy, to address violence within our communities.” For more about the strategy, go here.
Consent – defined by Philly Stands Up! as “an exchange of affirmative words and actions regarding sexual activity; agreement, approval, or permission that is fully-informed and freely and actively given without physical force, manipulation, stress, or fear.”
Criminal Legal System (aka: the criminal justice system) – defined by Philly Stands Up! as “a set of institutions, practices, policies, and attitudes for addressing instances of harm. The criminal legal system relies heavily on punishment and is comprised of law enforcement, courts, and prisons/jails.”
Feminism – defined by bell hooks as “a movement to end sexist oppression.”
Gender, Biological Sex & Sexuality – As Inda Lauryn indicates, gender is “how a person identifies and expresses themselves as male or female, or—for many somewhere in-between. This relates to social and cultural norms, expectations, values, attitudes and behaviors.” Biological sex “describes the kind of sex organs, chromosomes, and hormones a person has, and thus how they are often described: male, female, or intersex.” And sexuality encompasses “the sexual knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors of individuals,” according to the Sexuality and Education Council of the United States. For a more complete list of terms see “A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Important Gender and Sexuality Terms.”
Jail & Prison – Prison is a general term that encompasses a range of institutions of incarceration, including jails, which are run by the county or municipality and are typically designated for temporary detention.
Prison Abolition – defined by Critical Resistance as “a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.”
Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) – defined by Critical Resistance as “the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.”
Reproductive Justice – defined by Loretta Ross of SisterSong as “an expansion of the theory of intersectionality developed by women of color and the practice of self-help from the Black women’s health movement to the reproductive rights movement, based on the application of the human rights framework to the United States….We believe that the ability of any woman to determine her own reproductive destiny is directly linked to the conditions in her community and these conditions are not just a matter of individual choice and access.”
Transformative Justice – defined by Philly Stands Up! as “a way of practicing alternative justice which acknowledges individual experiences and identities and works to actively resist the state’s criminal injustice system.”
Trigger Warnings – explained by Sian Ferguson as “notes that preface possibly traumatic content.” For more background on why we use trigger warnings, see “What, Why, When, Where, and How?: 5 Common Questions About Trigger Warnings Answered” and “When You Oppose Trigger Warnings, You’re Really Saying These 8 Things.”
Women of Color – defined by Loretta Ross as “a political designation” and “commitment to work in collaboration with other oppressed women of color who have been minoritized.” Learn more about the history of the term here.
