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T A B L E++T A L K What do you do when you're forced to choose between child and career? Weigh in on the challenges working parent face in the Mothers area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Breathing lessons Shunning and shaming Your call is important to us. Not. I want you so bad Drama Queen BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATUREARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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SLAVES TO THE SYSTEM | PAGE 1, 2, 3, 4
One might ask why men are hired as correctional officers in female facilities at all. Ironically, one of the reasons cited most often is equal opportunity employment. If men were forbidden from working in female institutions, would that limit women's employment in the men's prisons, which make up 94 percent of all prisons nationwide? In the 1970s, female prisoners in New York state filed suit against the department of corrections, arguing that male guards should not be stationed in women's units at night, or be allowed into certain other private areas of the prison. Attorneys for the case, however, stopped short of arguing that men should be barred from working in women's prisons altogether. "We felt it was a balancing act between the 14th Amendment right to be free from employment discrimination vs. the First Amendment right and Eighth Amendment right" to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, said Barry. Another part of the answer arises from the weird logic of sexual politics behind bars: Some advocates for women in prison argue that some interaction with men, as long as it is tightly regulated, is better for female inmates' long-term well-being than no contact at all with the opposite sex. Other advocates say they are increasingly frustrated by those arguments. Debra LaBelle, the lead attorney on a Michigan suit against the department of corrections, said she has now decided that men should be prohibited from working in female facilities, because no matter how much training and investigation is done to cut down on misconduct, the cases of harassment and abuse continue to pile up. "I resisted going there for a long time, but now I don't know another solution," she says. Attorneys such as LaBelle chafe at the fact that in some states -- 14 to be exact -- it is still not even illegal for guards to engage in sexual activity with inmates. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia expressly criminalize sex or "sexual touching" between prison staff and inmates, according to Widney Brown, a researcher with the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, while many of the remaining states dictate only that guards not be "over-familiar" with prisoners, a law that is extremely vague and difficult to enforce. California, which boasts the largest number of incarcerated women in the nation, and the world's two largest women's prisons, criminalized sexual contact by guards with prisoners in 1994. But female inmates will tell you that hasn't done much to change the way guards in the state -- more than half of whom are men -- treat women in their custody. Elly Cruz wears her dark brown hair in layers shrouding her large brown eyes, button nose and mouth neatly lined with maroon lipstick pencil. She sits uncomfortably, hands tucked between her crossed knees, in the downtown San Jose, Calif., office of Amanda Wilson, a civil rights attorney who helped her file suit against the Santa Clara County Department of Corrections in August 1996. Soon after she arrived at the jail, in January 1995, one of the correctional officers told Cruz that he "liked" her. This was not news. The guard often followed her on the yard. He had obtained her home phone number from her custody file and memorized it. He watched her shower at least 14 times and hovered over her while she slept at night. Cruz informed the captain and several officers, and asked to be transferred. She was moved to another part of the jail -- but then he was too. He continued to pursue and harass her, physically restraining her several times to share his sexual fantasies, forcing her to play weird little word games that demanded that she answer with sexually explicit terms. Although Cruz didn't rebuff him outright, since he wielded a gun and a baton, she kept her distance. But that didn't work. "He started getting angry, and I started getting scared," says Cruz, her bottom lip beginning to quiver. She canvassed prison staff for support, asked repeatedly to be moved again and told her friends to make sure that she was never alone. But one day, he cornered her, grabbed her by the arm, handcuffed her to a door and pushed her to the ground. Then he stood over her and, with a steely voice, said, "I can do anything I want to you, don't you know that?" Then he let his hands roam free. "I just sat there with my hands behind me, I just went blank, I didn't even feel him touching me," she says, beginning to cry. "I felt so sick, I just felt so sick because the truth was that he could do anything he wanted, and nobody was going to believe me." Cruz was finally moved -- to the adjacent men's jail. There, she was in lock-down while male inmates passed her cell and watched her whenever they wanted. She later became the lead named plaintiff in Cruz vs. Vasquez, a class-action suit against the Santa Clara County Department of Corrections, alleging "a pattern and practice of sexual assaults, intimidation, abuse, threats of violence, sexual harassment and other violations of law." The case was settled in 1996, and the court ordered several changes in jail policy and facility design. But little has changed, says Wilson, whose law firm, the Public Interest Law Firm, recently filed a request to add another 50 plaintiffs to the suit. N E X T_ P A G E: A culture of sexual intimidation |
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