Is mass incarceration and detention of women becoming the new normal?

[niyad]

Is mass incarceration and detention of women becoming the new normal?

. . . . . .

Women are the fastest growing prison population in the US, and immigrant women, often along with their children, are being detained at increasing rates in family detention centers.
If so many of our people are out of commission, imprisoned, or disenfranchised, how will we get anything done? If a black woman can’t vote after spending time in prison, how is she supposed to have a political impact on minimum wage laws? If a Latina immigrant lives in fear that her family will be deported, how likely is it that she will protest the unfair treatment she receives at work?


The New York Times Magazine recently detailed some of the deeply troubling conditions that women and children are facing in family detention. Volunteer lawyers report underweight, sick children living in these centers with mediocre medical care. Many detainees are held for months and months. Asylum seekers fleeing horrific violence in Central America face often insurmountable barriers to accessing legal support, with minimal translation available, and convoluted legal proceedings.

Many migrants were held even after passing the initial “credible fear” test in the process of applying for asylum, an effort on the part of DHS to deter other migrants from crossing. Thanks to a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU, a federal judge has ordered a halt to the process. Immigration authorities are now required to release migrants who do not present a risk to public safety while they await their asylum case.

However, the number of migrants in detention continues to grow, often undetected. Take, for example, the tens of thousands of immigrants held on any given day by the Bureau of Prisons for immigration crimes. According to this Fusion investigative piece, “without a single vote in Congress, officials across three administrations: created a new classification of federal prisons only for immigrants; decided that private companies would run the facilities; and filled them by changing immigration enforcement practices.” This means that the U.S. taxpayers are now paying private prison corporations to incarcerate immigrants when they used to deport them. The conditions in these prisons are so deplorable, that just last week, an uprising at a Texas facility lasted two days while inmates protested poor medical care.

. . . .

http://feministing.com/2015/02/25/is-mass-incarceration-and-detention-of-women-becoming-the-new-normal/

[guillaumeb]

1. incarceration has always been used as a political weapon

It was used post Civil War as a means of re-enslaving blacks to accomplish two things.

1) free labor for the prisons that subcontracted/sold the free prisoner labor to local industries and plantations, and
2) by denying the franchise to former prisoners it negates the voting power of "undesirable" minorities.

When you said:
If a black woman can’t vote after spending time in prison, how is she supposed to have a political impact on minimum wage laws? If a Latina immigrant lives in fear that her family will be deported, how likely is it that she will protest the unfair treatment she receives at work?

this validates the whole system. And as a bonus the prison industrial system itself generates huge profits for private corporations like CCA and Wackenhut.

[niyad]

2. sadly, you are quite correct.

[Ilsa]

3. The prison in Texas that recently had a riot

was mostly immigrant men with more minor legal infractions, from what I read. It was run by a private company at taxpayer expense.

[niyad]

4. and this is apparently a situation that is only going to get worse.

[msongs]

5. our president and congress have privatized prisons to fill on behalf of their bosses nt

[niyad]

6. I have been involved, in a very small way, in an attempt to clean up a mess created

by part of the private prison industry here. sadly, they appear almost untouchable.