A Great Idea, A Commitment and an Embeded File

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By BitcoDavid

I am fortunate enough to live in quiet bedroom community outside of Boston, but it was not always thus. I used to live in the heart of one of the inner city’s biggest ghettos, Roxbury. I bring this up, because it was there, that dwelt a profound and long-lived piece of graffiti. Sprayed unceremoniously across a back-alley wall – and left untouched for years, perhaps even a decade – was simply, “Vietnam women carry guns.”

I always saw this brief epithet as an admonition to us, the three-legged gender. A line in the sand, if you will. To my interpretation, women were telling us that they would no longer bear the inequity, the violence, and the sexual servitude that made up their slice of the American pie. This spray-painted missive wasn’t a plea. It wasn’t even a demand. It was a warning.

US incarceration timeline

US incarceration timeline (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since that time, I have seen our national incarceration rates increase by nearly 800%. What I didn’t know however, was that that number consists of a 2 to 1 ratio of women over men. That’s right. Women are being sentenced to prison terms at almost double the rate of men. In addition, the prisons in question are not keeping up with this massive influx of population. They’re failing to offer job and drug counseling. They’re desperately wonton in providing prenatal and postnatal care. They are at a loss to address inmate on inmate violence and rape, and evidence exists that they may even be complicit in it. In fact, the prison system in America is woefully inadequate at addressing the psychological and physical needs of women.

Consider these points from the Sentencing Project.

  • The Criminal Justice System currently has jurisdiction over more than 1 million women.
  • More than a quarter of those are currently housed in some form of state prison or jail.
  • Women now account for 7% of all prisoners in the U.S.
  • The number of women in correctional facilities has increased by over 400% since the mid-eighties.
  • In 2003,  29% of women’s convictions were for a drug offense. Thirty percent were for a property offense, where men were at 19% and 20% respectively. On the other hand, men were convicted of a violent crime 53% of the time, as compared to women’s 35%.

Are women committing more crimes than they did 30 years ago? Is law enforcement doing a better job of catching and prosecuting these women? Or is it that the economic, social and legislative pressures that are working on building our new criminal class, have an even more devastating effect on our female population? In other words, are more and more women turning to drugs, prostitution and theft, because they see no other way out?

[scribd id=124796632 key=key-23h24f0v2y1pvtii77p8 mode=scroll]

Our gratitude to the Sentencing Project for their great work in putting together this report. To see the original, you can go here:

http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/womenincj_total.pdf

Tapestry Entertainment set out on a mission to bring awareness of this situation to the public. They decided that the best way to do that would be a movie – but here’s where their idea evolved from simply good to great. They didn’t want to make another documentary, and they certainly didn’t want to make a teen-porn Chained Heat kind of thing. What they did was to take letters and interview information from real women serving time in real prisons, and create a fictionalized facility which bears the title of their independently produced and marketed film – Women’s Playground.

Currently, their marketing plan involves screening events at selected independent theaters. As yet, they haven’t been able to get the film out, beyond the Philadelphia area. DeafInPrison.com has been in talks with Tapestry to work toward getting this powerful and entertaining independent film produced in DVD and streaming media formats. We are committed to making that happen. I think this movie needs to be seen. I think a film that is both educational and entertaining will work wonders in moving this tragic situation into the national debate.

BitcoDavid is a blogger and a blog site consultant. In former lives, he was an audio engineer, a videographer, a teacher – even a cab driver. He is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and a Pro/Am boxer. He has spent years working with diet and exercise to combat obesity and obesity related illness.

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