During this fall semester, I have had the privilege of taking COMM 498, a prison journalism course. There are six of us Penn State students, our Penn State instructor, Shaheen Pasha, and a varying number of female inmates.
Every Friday morning, we visit from 9 to 11. It’s been the same group of six different women from the facility who join us; although, since the start of our classes together, some have been released or moved to different facilities.
While it may sound enticing and obscure, like an itch you want to scratch by asking “what are they in for?” These women are just that. Women. I see them as mothers, workers, friends, people and I see my getting to spend time with them every week as a privilege.
I think the bigger question is: Why do you want to know what they’re in for? Why are you reading this paper? Maybe for education, to learn, to submerge yourself into a new understanding.
Maybe you’re just here for the juicy details, to curb your curiosity ignited by the title. I’ll level with you. You want juicy details? I’ll give you juicy details.
The Pepper Spray Reference
The women always bring up this story, which had happened recently in relation to our first joint class on Sept. 26.
One of the women in the cell block had had a moment, as we all do, but this moment specifically resulted in her getting maced. In the telling of the story, the ladies gaffed and assured they didn’t blame her, but regardless, the upset of the whole incident remained.
You can’t breathe, you can’t stop coughing, you need to breathe because you’re coughing, but when you go to breathe, you inhale mace and start coughing again.
Hours choking on air. “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” one of the more outspoken ladies said. While it was only one woman at the target of the macing, the ventilation in the jail kicked on and spread the warfare around the entire cell block. “I had to hide under my covers for hours.”
Could you imagine that? Could you even imagine talking casually about something like that happening to you? As if it were just another Wednesday. Hell of a hump day, that’s for sure.
Getting ready for the day
Caffeine, we all crave it. Most, if not all of us, perked up at the conversation of needing coffee to start our day, or in some cases, tea.
It takes so much yet so little to feel like people. A cup of coffee for focus, a flick of mascara on the lashes for routine. It’s the little things that make you feel human, that make you feel well during the day.
It’s the little things that women in jails are stripped of. “Makeup is one more thing to make you feel human, and they (COs) don’t like it.”
Apparently, you can wear makeup upstate and have pictures on your walls. Once it was stated that “the county dehumanizes you for prison”. The women make upstate sound like luxury, which should show you just how bad the Centre County Correctional Facility is.
Suicide Watch
One of the women had written a letter to her daughter that was flagged. She was put into suicide watch, better known as solitary confinement. Fed three meals a day, all bland foods, each repetitively the same, “no salt.”
She, along with anyone else thrown in solitary, was not allowed human interaction and was not allowed to leave. Because I’m sure conditions like that make you feel so much more sane.
Something about the concept of solitary doesn’t sit right with me. Maybe it’s the obvious: solitary confinement as a solution to mental health problems. Maybe it’s the less obvious, a forced bland diet of rudimentary food.
Whatever ethics you may nitpick, the question in conclusion stands: How is solitary confinement cohesive to healing? It’s not.
Dentists and Mental Health ‘Appointments’
For mental health, the process goes: schedule an appointment, wait two months, the day finally comes, it’s a five-minute Zoom call.
Quick. As efficiently as you can describe everything that’s been wrong with you, bothering you and biting you for the past two months and beyond. Here’s some max dosage classic SSRIs if you’re lucky, maybe some Lithium if you’re a lab rat.
The women with said Lithium was becoming a common method of treatment in the cell block; it turned people into zombies. If you’re unfortunate enough to get put on Lithium, or any other medication that doesn’t work with you, for that matter, too bad! You have to take it anyway, and then wait another two months for an appointment to adjust your dosage.
Another thing we touched on was toothaches. It is $12 to see a dentist, and they just pull your teeth out instead of providing proper treatment. Pulling adult teeth, which you have for the rest of your life, are yanked out just like that.
The first contingency that came to mind? What if you’re only in for 12 months, you get two tooth aches, and suddenly you’re leaving and living the rest of your life with two fewer teeth? Must we really be that harsh?
Female Hygiene
The women of Center County had a limited supply of tampons, consisting of super and regular. Every woman got an allotted amount for the month, and one or two extra upon each request. Pretty soon, that limited number of regulars and supers turned to only supers; regular tampons were for sale, though, 40 cents a piece from the commissary.
Even for the women who have jobs in the facility, 40 cents is steep, considering they only make two dollars a day. Some of the women have no money, and they can’t make it, leading to them not getting sent any. You’d be lucky to have someone sending you cash flow from the outside.
One of the main things the women talk about is the horrible conditions inside the facility. Sure, it’s jail, stuff happens, the mace bomb was an accident, but this? No access to feminine hygiene products? It’s nearly unjustifiable.
Laundry
When the ladies can’t get access to tampons? Simple. They have to bleed through.
In an article from the Prison Journalism Project, Kelsey Dodson writes about “What It’s Like to Have Your Period in Prison,” noting the shared experience of state-allocated 15 pads and 10 tampons per month.
What results from this allocation is an experience she calls the overflow. With only seven pairs of panties and an insufficient supply of feminine products, you can imagine the issues that arise from this.
“It’s degrading.” One of the women, who gets paid to do laundry, takes extra time to wash soiled items separately from the pants and t-shirts of daily wear. She would get in trouble for doing so if the wrong authority figure found out.
The women are not allowed to wash their clothes in their cell and must ask for vinegar bags in front of everyone when items get soiled. I highly question the humanity of these facilities, and I certainly denounce their decency.
One of the women told me she requested extra toilet paper from a correctional officer, and they were reluctant to hand any over. The argument was: “I gave you some yesterday.”
They Live in the Outside World
Having dogs, children, boyfriends and busy lives in which they have no time to read. One of the women has a gaggle of grandchildren, one has six kids and one has a six-month-old baby.
Looking to be cared for, caring for one another and counseling. “We watch out for each other.” They are family, like the truest a woman can be. Listening, hearing, talking, sharing.
Brainwashed like the consumers we are, we see uncivilness within the walls of prisons and jails, instead of where it really is, in the society that enables such uncivilness by creating inhumane facilities that often only the underprivileged suffer from. We ourselves, in this very fact, are more uncivil than the people within walls.
These are not stories of jail, of criminals, of juicy details of crime. These are stories of life. Of people who just want fresh air, of people who simply want the wash taken off their windows so they can see outside.
These are women who endure collective punishment, who are reprimanded inside based on no guidelines except those of personal judgment. These are women who have to fight too hard every day to be seen as individuals.
Women who were wrong once and are now treated as if they can never be right again, not even in asking to be accommodated for their own dietary restrictions, not even in asking for some extra toilet paper.