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JAIL BIRDS
Inside the state’s only all-women prison
BY DEIRDRE FULTON

"A women’s prison is not just a men’s prison with women in it," says Cristina Rathbone, a 39-year-old Roslindale resident and author of A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars (Random House). The differences range from quirky — black-market trading is for cosmetics and tweezers rather than cigarettes or weapons — to grave: "Life in a women’s prison is a place of deep sadness, and tremendous isolation, and institutional disregard, really," Rathbone says. "It’s just that women in prison are so often overlooked. Prisons have been designed and created with men in mind, and with male needs in mind, and it’s just not set up well for women."

Her book, which was published in May, offers chilling details about life inside MCI-Framingham, the state’s only all-female prison, and the country’s oldest. It includes the story of Julie, whose profile on www.JailBabes.com attracted a creep who became obsessed with her. There are also guards who have sex with inmates, and traumatizing detox wards; the women are afforded inadequate medical care.

It took Rathbone two different lawsuits to gain the access she needed to write her book, the result of five years of research, interviews, and immersion. Eventually, she was granted permission to enter the visiting area — and nowhere else — at MCI-Framingham. She developed relationships with women of all ages and several ethnicities, most incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, as is the case with more than two-thirds of the nation’s female inmate population. Women disproportionately bear the brunt of mandatory sentencing laws, Rathbone says, so much so that some law-enforcement officers refer to "the girlfriend problem" when talking about women who get jail time because their boyfriends are involved with drugs.

Another problem is that the Department of Correction (DOC) is not even aware of how many children have mothers in the state’s correctional system, as revealed in the report Women in Prison in Massachusetts: Maintaining Family Connections, released in March by the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at UMass Boston.

"It’s so revealing," Rathbone says. "If they don’t know that, they know nothing."

New commissioner Kathleen Dennehey is a "self-proclaimed reformer," Rathbone points out, who may encourage much-needed innovation in educational offerings and other programming.

It’s not impossible. At a Brookline Booksmith reading two weeks ago, an elderly woman sat in the front row as Rathbone answered questions from the audience. Toward the end, the woman revealed that she had worked years ago as a volunteer at what was then called the woman’s "reformatory." Run by Miriam Van Waters in the 1930s, the reformatory held classes in everything from public speaking and English as a Second Language to cooking and poetry. Rathbone crouched before the woman and listened to a 15-minute description of how things were in the past. Later, she called the woman’s story a "shining example ... of what could go on."


Issue Date: September 2 - 8, 2005
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