We at IMPACT Boston were horrified to hear Governor Healey’s announcement that her administration is planning to build a new women’s prison complex estimated at $360 million. Shortly after that announcement, we learned that Massachusetts is cutting $7 million from funds for domestic violence and sexual assault services.
We join No New Women’s Prison, Jane Doe, Families for Justice As Healing, BIJAN/Beyond Borders, and many other Massachusetts organizations in calling on our government to change course and adopt a different approach to safety – one that is based in healing, community safety, and prevention.
Incarceration is an ineffective solution that only causes more harm to women who are likely victims themselves. Most women in prison are survivors of sexual and/or intimate partner violence – as many as 94% in some women’s prison populations. And women are at risk of being assaulted by a guard or another prisoner once they are incarcerated – 71% of those in California women’s prisons report experiencing continual physical abuse by guards or other imprisoned people; transgender men and women, LGBTQ folks, and immigrants in the detention system are even more at risk.1
In a statement, Jane Doe, Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, explains how survivors are too often punished: “Survivors are often criminalized and incarcerated for actions taken in the context of surviving violence, such as substance abuse, experiencing homelessness, or acts of self-defense, or for offenses they were coerced into through abuse.”2
Consider this virtual testimony from Kirsten Smith who is incarcerated at MCI-Framingham: “If it were not for untreated mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse, Framingham would be near empty. Most of the women here were victims of violence and abuse, long before committing any crime. Many, like myself, asked for help, and received none. Society has failed to protect many of the women here since childhood and continues to fail them now. It’s not the prison itself that needs to be rebuilt, it’s the system that’s broken and that should be the focus.”
Survivors know what they need, and incarcerated survivors are the best judges of what women need to prevent the traumatizing outcome of incarceration. Yet the administration did not ask for input from incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women. If they had, they might have considered how that huge amount of money could be invested to both help women at risk of incarceration and prevent future crime. Based on the 220 women currently in MCI-Framingham, Healey’s plan has a projected cost of $1.6 million per woman. Imagine what that money could do to help a woman who is experiencing homelessness, or a woman with untreated mental health issues or drug addiction, or a woman who is staying with an abusive partner because she cannot survive on her own financially.
In our self-defense classes, students sometimes ask us if they could potentially end up in legal trouble for protecting themselves. Even though our curriculum emphasizes de-escalation and avoiding the use of physical skills except as a last resort, the answer is yes. While our students have come to us to learn skills that may help them survive a terrifying moment, the state needs to do more to ensure that women and people of all genders are not punished for surviving.
We want to live in a state that chooses to invest in women before that moment – so they can have financial stability, protect their kids, and get the care they need. Investing in the incarceration of women does not make anyone safer.
BIJAN/Beyond Borders said it best in an email to its volunteers: “At a time when Massachusetts is turning away refugees and other immigrants claiming that we do not have money to give them temporary shelter. At a time when investment into long-term truly affordable housing is desperately needed in order to open up space in those shelters for newly arriving families. At a time when the federal government moves to cut billions from needed services like MassHealth and education and instead increases immigration detention and enforcement.3 It is at this time that investment into our communities is needed more than ever, not into the expansion of carceral infrastructure that will only serve to continue to rip families apart.”
Here’s what you can do: Go to bit.ly/FreeHerMA. Use the templates there to email and/or call the Governor. Sign the petition (also linked there).