Celling Black Bodies:
Black Women in the
Global Prison
Industrial Complex

by Julia Sudbury

Used with permission of author. Originally appearing in Feminist
Review: 80. 2005, pg 162179
introduction

My mother got twelve ears. She's in Fosion Hall. They can give people those
Tong sentences just for knowing drugs are in the house. He sentenced her o
12 years for knowing, She wasn't ven involved and he knew that. But he said
she knevw it was in the country and i it had got through. she would have.
benefied from it. from any money. He said one only has (0 read the papers
every day 10 know the trouble it causes onee it gets in the pubs and clubs.
wha it does (0 people. There was arecorder n the cage and she was sayin:
“Why did you do if” They convicted her on that

(snet, HMP Holloway).

Janet i an African Caribbean woman in her mid-twenties serving a seven year
sentence for importation of Class A drugs. She was six months pregnant when she
was arrested at Heathrow airport and brought to HMP Holloway, England's oldest
and most notorious women'sprison. A fier having her son, she was transferred o the
Mother and Baby Unit where | interviewed her.In this ‘compassionate” penal
environment, designed o punish the mather but not her innocent child. Janet and son
are confined t0.3 60 by 80 cel with a hed. toilet and close from 8 PM 10 8 AM.
‘During the day. they have intermittent access to acreche, playroom and roof garden
where the baby can breathe fresh s under wire mesh designed to prevent escape
attempts. When her son reaches nine months, Janet will be transferred to another unit
where she can keep him for a further nine months, at that stage, they will be
separated while she serves the remainder of her sentence. While Janet was sentenced
101 lenient”seven years because of her guilty pea. her mother, who was ot
involved in the drug trade. was sentenced (0 12 years because of her ailure o report
her daughter to the poice.

Janet, her mother and her son represcnt thce generations caught up in an ever
expanding network of penal repression and profit that increasingly defies national
borders. The past two decades have witnessed dramatic increases in women's
incarceration accompanicd by expansive prison building programs in Britain as well
as the rest of Western Europe. North America and Australasia. At the same time.,
there has been a shif in the nature of confinement as the private prison industry has
been embraced by New Labour and Conservatives alke, and the deprivation of
liberty has become an extremely profitable enterprisc. This aricle willargue that the
explosion in women's incarceration i the hidden face of neo-fberal or “corporate’
globalization and can ot be undersiood without reference (0 thrce overlapping
phenomena. The first is the fundamental restruciuring of national cconomies and
social welfare provision that has occurred as result ofthe globalization of capital.
“The second and relted phenomenon is the emergence and subsequent global expan-
sion of what has been labellcd a *prison industrial complex” made up of intricate
web of elations between state penal iniitutions. politicians and profi-driven prison
corporations. The third i the emergence of 2 US-led global war on drugs which is
symbiotically rlated and mutually constituted by the transnational trade in s

criminalized drugs.: These new regimes of sccumulation and discipline. | ill
build on older systems of racist and patrarchal exploitation o ensure the super-
exploitation of black women and women of colours within the global prison
industrial comples.

the global boom in women's imprisonmcat

Since the early 1990s. increases n theprison populaion in England and Wales have
sparked a boom in prison consiruction. leading commentators o comment on ‘the
largest prison building program since the middle of the 19th centry’ (Morgan, 1999:
110). Whilk women make upa small proportion of those incarceratd. thir rats of
imprisonment have muliplied faster than men'’. causing feminist activists 10 call for
drastic measures to counter “the crisi in women's prisons'.+ Between 1985 and 1998,
for example, the number of women in prison more than doubled, from 1,532 10 3,260
(Prison Reform Trust. 2000). The prison service has responded by contracting with
private corporations 10 built and operate new prisons, and by rerolling men'’s prisons
for women. Recent government s designed o slow the increase in the use of
incarceration, such as Home Detention Curfews, have had lite impact on the
‘number of women sentenced 10 prison which continued to grow during the year
102001 by 9%, compared o 2% for men. The British patiem s mirored elsewhere.
Inthe US, where the prison and jail population reached two million in the year 2000,
‘women's incarceruion i also spiraling upwards a a geater pace than that of men.
‘While the number of men in US prisons and jails doubled between 1985 and 1995,
‘women's imprisonment during the same period wipled (Deparment of Justie, 1998).
In 1970. there were 5.600 women n federal and sate prison, by 1996, there were
75,000 (Curric, 1998). In Austali. a surging women's prison population,
accompanied by pressure from activist organizations. forced the Parliament of New
South Wales to commission a Select Commitiee on the Increase in Prisoner
Popalation (Bacon and Pillemer.2000). The Select Commitee was instructed to
investigate a 20% increase in men's and 40% increase in women's incarceration
(Parliament of New South Wales. 2001). In Canada, the increase in federally
sentenced womea prisoners. accompanicd by pressure from penal reform
organizations, has led 1o the construction of ive new federal prisons for women
(Hannah-Moffat and Shaw. 2000) In Ontario. spiraling numbers of prisoners have
fueled the construction of three 1600-bed superjils where growing women's
population will b warchoused within US-style, sustre coed faclitis.

Aggregaterates ofincrease in prison populations under-represent the impact of the
prson boom on black women, women of colour and indigenous women. Inal the
countries mentioned above, oppressed racialized groups are disproportionaiely
represented. For example.in New South Wales, while all women's imprisonment
increased by 40%in S years, sboiginal women's incarceration increased by 70% in
only owo years. In Canada, aboriginal people comprise 3% of the general popalation
and 12% of federal prisoners. a figure that increases 1o ovr 0% i provinces like
Saskatchewan and Albera (Canadian Criminal Justice Association 2000). Afrcan

4 Canadians are lso disproportionatly policd, prosccuted and incarcerated

(Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System 1994).
the US, Latinas and African American women make up 60% of the prison
‘population. And despite their small numbers i the population. Native Americans are
tentimes more lkely than whites o be imprisoned (Rojas. 1998). Finally. 12 of
women prisoners in England and Wales are African Caribbean Britsh passport
olderss compared 10 1% of the general population (EIkins e a.. 2001). In addition.
British prisons hold numerous women from West Africa. the Caribbean and Latin
America. cither as immigration detainecs. o serving sentences for drug importtion.
The criis of women's pisons can therefare be read as a crisis for black women and
Women of colour worldwide.

the emergence of the prison industrial complex
Activist-intellectuals in the US have traced the emergence of what has been labelled
the prison industrial complex” {0 the economic transformations of the 1970 s (Davis.
1998, Goldberg and Evans 1998). As advances in technology enabled corporations o
transport information and capital between distant geographic locations in fractions of
a second, new forms of lobalized capial began 10 appear. US-based corporations
downsized their unionized Westem workforces and relocated manufacturing
operations (o locations in the global south where labour was cheap and labour and
environmental protections minimal. Multinational trade agreements such as NAFTA
and GATT and the establishment of Free Trade Zones hastened the process. opening
the doors t the unhindered super-exploitation of predominantly young women of
colour from Tijuana to Manila. The impact of massive downsizing n the US on
urban African American and Latino communities was caastrophic. Redlining and
acist violence had kept African Americans and Latinos out of the 19505
suburbanization drive that had allowed many working class white families to move
‘out ofthe inner citis. resticting the former to urban ghettos where they were
warehoused with few opportunites for mobility (Oliver and Shapiro, 1995). As job
cuts hit these communities, they were devastated by pandemic raes of
unemployment.a declining tax base and resultan cuts i socal. welfare. educational
and medical provision. The resul: spiraling ates of poverty. drug addiction, violence
and social dislocation. These conitions were not met passively. The Black Libera-
tion Army. Black Panihers. Young Lords. Chicano Power and American Indian
movement were the organized voice of the resistance that sprung from these
oppressive conditions. However these movements encountered brutal repression and
criminalization. The FBI's Counter Intlligence Program (COINTELPRO) idenified
the Black Panihers as THE _ number one threa 0 the security of the US and tareeted
actvists such as Assata Shakur. Pam Africa and Angela Y. Davis for ‘neutralization’
via trumped up charges. massively publicized manhunts and incarcerati

imagination. black protest was synanymous with lawlessness and violence.
overt Jim Crow racism had waning public acceptance in this post-Civil Rights
era of Martin Luther Kingesque integrationist policies.criminalization provided a
new camouflaged racist language in which code words such as ‘criminal’. drug
dealer” and *welfare queen’ could he wsed to refer obliquely f0 the acialized 5

“enemy within (Davis, 1998: 66). Criminalization thcrefore became the weapon of
hice in dealing with the social problems cunsed by the globalization of capital and
the protest it engendered

Jocl Dyer argues that three components make up the *perpetiual prisoner machine”
that tansforms cinvinalized population in the US o fodder for the prison sysiem
and has caused the prison population i the US 1o increase tenfold in twenty years
(Dyer, 2000). The firs is the consolidation of lage media corporations that ely on
violent and erime-oriented content to grab ratings and that have creaed a dramatic

tise inthe fear of crime in the US population at farge. The second i the increasing
use of poling and market rescarch by politiians to align their platforms with
“populr” views about policy areas, leading 1o “tough on crime” hetoric on both sides
of the clectoral spectrum. This rhetoric s ranslated into policies such as mandatory
minimuns.truhin-sentencing and three stikes that cause more people 1o serve.
prison sentences, for longer terms and leads to spiraling prison populations. The third
s the intervention of private prison corporations suich as Wackenhut Corporation and
Comections Corporation of America which provide a way for governments o expand
their prison estate without having (o spend the intial capital cost of prison
construction. The mutually profitable elationship between privale corporations and
public riminal justce systems enables politiians to mask the enormous cost of their
tough-on-crime polcies by sidesteppins the usual process of sking the electorte to
vote for prison bonds" (0 raise funds 10 build publicly operated prisons. Instead, they
can simply reallocate revenue funds from welfae, health or education

into contracts with privately run for-proft prisons. Since the 1980s, the private sector
has allowed prison building o continue, even where public coffers have been
‘exhausied by the prison consiruction boom. It has been rewarded with cheap land,
tax breaks and discounts in sewage and uilties charges, making prison companies a
misjor beneficiary of corporate welfare. These three components consiitue the
“political and economic chain reaction" that we have come o know as the prison
industial complex: a symbiotic and profitable relationship benveen poiticians,
corporations. the media and siate correctional instiutions that generates the
racialized use of incarceration us a response to social problems rooted in the
obalization of capital.

the PIC goes glabal

‘Although the prison industrial complex emerged in the US, the past 15 years have
witnessed its transformation into a global phenomenon. Multinational prison
corporations have fueled this expansion through an agsressive strategy of pursuing
foreign markets through sophisticated marketing techiques. Targeting British
politcians has proven partcularly fuitful. During the 19805, Labour and
Conservative polit i

surveillnce appeared 0 offer a sriking advance over Britain’ decaying penal estae
6 The glossy rhetoric of the ‘new corrections where prisoners were called
‘residents, prison guards “supervisors”and cells ‘rooms” was favourably con
the brutal ind dehumanizing prison cultue in Britsin which had long proved
resistant o reform. Prior 1 this time. both sides of the House of Commons were
‘opposed toprison privatization. Poliicians tended o view the denial of reedom as
00 serious an undertaking (0 be entrusted o privat interests and subjected fo the
vagaries of the profit molive. But these carflly orchestrated visits led 10 a sea-
change. As Sir Edward Gardner. Chair of the all.pary penal affars group.
commented ater a vist 10 the US in 1986: \We thought it was stunning. These plces
dida’t feel like prisons and didn’t smel ike prisons. There was nothing we could
find to critcize” (Young. 1987: 3).

dio

In 1987, a Home Affirs Select Commitiee visited four adult and juvenile jals run by
the Corrections Corporation of America and the Radio Corporation of America. The
Select Commitie subsequently recommended that corporations should be invied fo
bid for contracts to build and manage custodial instituions, nitally s an
experiment. A key 1o the recommendation was that privatization would dramaically
accelerate the prison building program. which was hindered by lack of public funds
(Speller, 1996: 5). Gradually. key Britsh politicians and administrators were won
‘over to the possibilie for cost cutting. modemization and prison expansion offered
by the corporate agenda. Privatization was presenied as a panacea t the problems
facing the prison service: overcrowding. old buildings. high annual costs. esistance
o reform and arigid prison guard cultur reinforced by the powerful Prison Officers
Association. Between 1991 and 1994 the mutually proftabl relationship between
‘onservative polticians and the prison indusiry culminated in a sries of Acts which
allowed for corporations (0 design, construct, manage and finance new prisons and (0
bid to operate existing prisons FN [5]. By 1997, when New Labour came to power.
Britain had become a profiable locaion for multinational prison corporations.
producing revenues of over 95 million British Pounds for the five lading private
incarcerators, Premier Prison Services (a joint ventre of Wackenhut and Sodexho).
‘Wackenhut (UK) Lid. UK Detention Services (a jont venture of Correciions.
Corporation of America and Sodexhol. Securicor and Group 4 (Prison Privaisation
Report Intemational, 1998a; Sudbury 2000, Although Labour had condemned the
‘Conservative privatizaion program. pre-¢lection promises fo return prisons fo the
public sector were short ived (Prison Privatisation Report Intemational, 1996).
Within a year of election, Home Secretary Jack Straw announced that privately run
prisons would only retum 10 the public scctor if the latir could outbid their private
‘competitors, and that new prisons would be built under the Private Finance Inititive
(Prison Privatisation Report Intemaional. 1998b)While Wackenhut Corporation,
Conctions Corporation of America and others have reaped enormous profitsin the
US since the 19805, their profits have recently been compromised. A radical popular
prison movement, and aseries of high profile legal cases have pushed the US prison
industry into a period of crisis as shares g0 into freefall.» Critial Resistance. the
Prison Moratorium Project and the Black Radical Congress *Education not
Incarceralion’ campaign have mobilized popular support and media coverage in
questioning the logic of ever increasing incarceration. At the same time, private
prisons corporations have proven vulnersble to the *Jena” ffcct, whersby a case of 7

‘malpractice tums the tide of popular and political sentiment and corporations are left
with legal osts and empy facliies due to cancelled contracts. Potentally damag-
ing incidents of prisoner abuse. sexual assault, violence and protests are generated by
the very conditions that make prisons proftable: low paid ngn-unionized staf, low
taffing atios and sparse provision of acivitcs fo prisoners (Yeoman, 2000).
‘Although corporations engage in a process of damage liitation, whereby they seck
10 suppress public knowledge sbout such incidents, close scfutiny by prison activists
has severely limited thir ability 0 do 50. As domestic profits come under threa,
forcign operations play key role in maintaining corporate viabilty. Nev prisons in
Marchington. Olney and Peterborough therefore play an imporant role in
maintuining the viabilty of the multinational prison indusiry as it secks new markets
in South Africa and further afield (Martn, 2001). Women and men serving time in

British prisons thus fuel stock market profits from London to New York. reinforcing
the logic of incarceration with the logic of capitalist accumulation.

the war on drugs wages war on women

With the entering of the New Year, | want 10 give you the gif of vision, to see
his system of Moder Day Slavery for wha it s, The government gets paid
525,000 ayear by you (taxpayers) to house me (us). The more of u that they
incarcerate, the more money they get from you (o build more prisons. The
building of more prisons create more jobs. The federal prison system is
‘comprised of 61% drug offenders, 5o basically this war on drugs s the reason
why the Prison Industrial Comples is sky rocketing enterprisc

(Kemba Smith, 1999).

1n2000 two Aficun American women were among the prisoners granted clemency
by outgoing President Clinton. Dorothy Gaines and Kemba Smith's cases had been
highlighted by onganizations including Families Against Mandatory Minimums,the
Kemba Smith Justice Project and the Million Woman March as evidence of the
egregious njustices occurring as a result of the war on drugs’ and the paricular
impac on women. Kemba Smith's case in paticular attained national atintion and
was widely repored in the mainsiream press.v Kemba was a student at Hampton
College, a waditionally black college in Virginia. She became involved with a young
man, Khalif Hal, who, unknown 1o her was a key figure in a large drug operation.
Kemba stayed with Hall despite abuse and threats (o kill her because she was afraid
for her family and herself and because she had become pregnant, Shorly before the
drug ring was apprehended, Hall was shot and killed. Kemba pleaded guilty to
conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, but hoped Hall’s abusive behaviour would be:
taken ino account. Instead, she was held responsible for the full 255 kg involved in
the offense. although she personally was ot found (o have handled the drugs, and
was sentenced 10 24.5 years in prison. Kemb. like Janet and her mother (above)
have been targeted by a transrational war on drugs that emerged in the mid 1980s in
the United States and has since been agressively exported around the globe. While
the shadowy figure of the drug dealer ortrafficker tends 10 be: 3

envisioned in the popular media as male. increasingly women are the low level

new pair of shoes. But it was hard for me 10 ask him for anything be cause |
don'| Yike aking anybody for anything. | never got any money.

e and Her partner were marrid before she was finally arested and incarcersted
a1 Grand Valley State, Kitchener. During the irst few days of her sentence. she met
the first couier and also leared tht her husband had aready moved i with another
gilfind. Nevertheles,she rfused to trade information for shorter sentence out of
Toyalty andespect for his patemal rle:

1 had been told don't implicate him because he's sill on parole. so he'd do

time than | would, because he'd go back 1o jail o finish the remainder
of his sentence. plus a new charge. So | figure | can't do that o him because.
1°d e taking the kids away from their father. And altogether I was with him
for 7 172 years.

Dianes ca s he comples e of mdon esomomic andshse hatofen
draw women
\womén, B Richie argacs e gender cnrapmen.bestGescrbes he way in which
black areincarcerated due (0 their involvement with a coercive and violent
male (Richie, 1996). While Diane was not subjected (o physical violence, her
partner’s canirolling behaviour n reation (0 the money which she generated through
imporatio, the deception with regard o his other grlfiends, and his apparently
cynical usd of marriage 25 a means of controlling her labour form a web of abuse and
exploiatioh. By controling the labour of his ‘stable of mules’ through promises of
Tove and cmmitment, Diane’s partner generates wealth for himself without either
taking the personal risk of importation, or paying the going rat of several thousand

stories of thany of the women | interviewed. As Marta explained:

Me do it [import], but they tend to prey on the women more. Because they
that the woman in Jamaica, they care fo their family, especially their
“They would do anything to make sure their kids is looked afir. So they
‘mainly prey on the woman, especially single woman. You have men do it, but
the humber isn't a large as the woman.

‘Wornen's Subordinate ole n heterosexual rlationships and thir ole asthe primary
and ofen dole carers of children combine 10 devalue thir abour n the drug trade.
“The low vhlue of women's labou in the drug trade is demonsirated by the women |
interviewef who reported being ‘set up’ as decoys o that their arrest would distract
customs offcials from 2 larer shipment coming through. Paid anywhere from z¢ro
o few thousand pounds for carrying a shipment woth upwards of 100,000 B
Pounds, whinen form a cheap and rplaceable army oflaboures. As one is
incarceraed,another, ke Diane, quickly il her place.

| 3
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the global feminization and raciaf

ation of poverty

\While transnational drug policies play an important ole in channelling
olour into prisons from Cape Town (o Toronto, women are not without apency and
do.of course, make choices within th options avilable o them. As the
‘conomy has been transformed however.these options have become i
limited. In the global south.this economic transformation has driven a shif in the
role of the state. Firsily, govemments have been formed to scale down the role 25
providers of a social-welfare fabric as intemational financial intitutions hve driven
neo-iberal economic reform. In Jamaica. polcies introduced since the mig 1980s by
the Jamaican Labour Party working closely with the US. IMF and World Hank. have
led o cutbacks in public sector employment, the scaling back of local govmment
services, health and education, ncreases inthe cost of public utilites as styte owned
companies are sold to the private sector and s dramaic decline in real wages. Such
cuts hit women particularly hard as they carry the burden of caring for children and
sick or elderly relatives (Harrison, 1991). Marta’s experience exemplifies
increasing econommic pressures facing women:

‘Things in Jamaica is very expensive. Ifs hard for a single woman
especially anywhere over three kids,to get by without a good suppdrtor a
steady job. It doesn mean that | didn't have an income. I did have pin income.
but having four kids and an ex-husband who doesn'treally care muth. | had
1o keep paying school fees and the money kept going down. did nied some
Kkind of support. That's why I did wha I did. We don' get child su
Jamaica, three quartrs of the things that this country offers for
we don't have it This county gives you a house, they give you beefis, we
gt nothing in Jamaica. We have 10 pay for hospital, not even educaion is
free. Primary school used to be free under one govemment hand. but under
snother government it has been taken away. You're taking about hih school,
you're alking sbout ifien up 0 twenty thousand dolars temm. oy one kid
10,80 10 high school. Its difficult in Jam;

weekends ofsun, sea and sand.nFireign-
ned agibusines and mining companics have also been encouraged, dis
raditional subsistence arming and causing migraton from ruralareasto e ciics.
now account fo 509 o the Jamaican population. As the economy s shified,
women working in the informal economy as farmers and “higglers” find thimselves
unable 10 keep up withthe rising costs of survival. While younger women fay find
employment in the tourist industry as maids, entertainers or prosttutes, or ithin the
Free Trade Zones assembling clothes or computers for Western markets, wirking
class women in their thirties and older have fewer options. Even where thede women
14 do find employment. low wages, driven down by multinational corporaions in

]
i

search of eer greater profit margins and keptlow by govemments unwilling 1o set 3
fiving mirifum wage for fear of losing foreign investment, mean that they can not
eam a suffidient income t0 support their amilis. The failure of the legal economy 1o,
provide adehuate means for women's survival i the key incentive for those who *
chose 10 enfer the drug trade as couriers

‘The feminidation of povery in the global south is mirrored by conditions among.
black peopl and commanities of colour i the West. As Naomi Klein argues. the

At the samd time, successive govemments, whether espousing compassionate.
conservativism or the ‘third way," have pursued market-led economic reforms which
have dramaically reduced public services, introduced widespread privatization and
franchisement of working class and

lfare, and the targeting of single mothers in particular as a drain on the
his impoverishment that act as the molor 10 Women’s

. panticular lomen of colour therefore bear the brunt of both the puntive and

the crimindlized cconomy of the intemational drug trade is closely interrlated to
xplotation within the formal sectors of the global economy (the Free

the WTO in Seattle than
itutional racism. While
of the north have been

anti-cacist brganizers s wel as anti-globalization activists. Research into sex
tourism, the traficking of women, women as workers n th fre trade zones and
homeworkkrs in the gament indusry and women in the global food chain have all
demonsirated the centrliy of black women and women of colour 0 the new global
regimes ofaccumulation (Phizackca, 1990; Kempadoo, 1999: Ching Yoon 15

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regimes that underpin these processes. The ‘prison-fike” conditions under
vomen labour in the frec tade zones. with restricted access to resrooms.
‘overtime and punitive sanctions for union ativities and pregnancy. have
considerable outrage among researchers and actvist alke (Klein, 2001).
confinement of increasing numbers of women inthe prisons and jais o e global
north. where they are subject o scparation. someimes permanent, from clfldren.
sexual abuse. medical neglect and forced labour has, howeer, been
muted. Perhaps the explanation for this muted response lies in a
women's incarceration o the social. economic and environmental concer
‘generated by the new global economy. The prison has raditionally served fhe
purpose of separating those who have “offended from the social bod polftic.
Prisoners are therefore scen as *criminals’ whose behaviour is qualiatively difTerent
from that of ‘normal” people and musttherefore be analysed using differet ools,
hence the existence of criminology as a distinct discipline. Yet if the complex web
that has led 10 the massive increases in women's (and men's) imprisonmer} docu-
mented in this artcle is o be understood and challenged. prisons must be fiberated
from the criminologists and criminal justice professionas. and brought unler the
serutiny of anti-globalization, feminist and anti-racist sholars and aciivist. Prisons
serve avitalrole in suppressing dissent and invisibilizing disenfranchised
populations. They therefore maintain th viabilty of corporate lobalizatidn and
mask its devastating effects on global majority communities. Prisons also play
direct role i capital accumulation since their operation generates proft fof
corporations engaged in building, equipping and operating them as well ad those em-
ploying prisoners as cheap labour. Increasingly, black women and women bf colour
are the raw material that fuelthe prison indusirial complex: as scapegoats bf tough-
‘on-crime rhetoric; targets of drug busting operations that generate million for police,
customs and miltary budets; or workers sewing and assembling electronies in
prison workshops. There is a necd for a new anti-racist fr beplore
how the complex matrix of race, cass. gender and nationality meshes witl
‘contemporary globalized geo-political and cconomic reaities. It must be
transnation: its integrated analysis of gender-rafe- class
and in locating black women and women of colour i te centre. As the gepdered and
raialized bodies that wm prison cells into profit margins. women of colour play a
vital role in the global prison industrial complex. As activiss,inside and ofside of
the prison walls, we are a criical part of the forces that are challenging it parasitic
existence. The challenge forscholars and actvists alike i to make visible e women
hidden behind prison walls arid to dismantle the proftable synergies betwaen drug
enforcement, the prison indusry. intemational financial intitutions, medid and
politicians that are celling black wormen in ever increasing numbers.

Notes:

1 Between 1999 and 2001 1 iterviewed 50 women in prisons in England, Fanada
and the US. All names of women prisoners are psyeudonyms.
2 The ‘threat” of drugs can be seen (o be socially consirucied in 5o far as sTv\

16

i
oo witlcive popenies nd amging ol coneences nlcing

violence and theft (1obacco, alcGhol) are sold to the public legally under govemment

license, and others (heroin, cannabis. cocaine) are criminalized. In addition,

substancesfhat are llegal in one context (akcohol during Prohibition), may be

enjoyed legally in another. Others may be simultancously legal and llgal (medical

Io Califomia). Referring to “criminalized" rather than “illegal drugs

that ‘the ke "the crime’she commits ae products of penal

1 shift over time.

fbout gender and race transnationally generates problems of naming. since
have different meanings depending on location. I this aticle, | use

common term for women of African, Caribbean and Asian ofigins

Britain onll; since “black” in the US and Canada refers nly to women of African

descent, | fse ‘women of colour" 10 efer to women of African, Asian, Latin

and problematicaly called * the Third World'.
in Women's Prisons', Press Release, Leeds Metropolitan University,
butp/AwwwImu.ac.uk/ news/press/archive/ apr99/prisons.him.

s have changed the way in which they report ethnic origin in order 0

Iders, the Home Office Research Development Staistcs unit has
he proportion of Afrcan Caribbean women prisoness by 51% (0 12% of
pared 10 1% of the general populaton (EIkins et al., 2001 ). However
e 10 be seight of hand if one considers the large number of black
nts who Hold ‘commonwealth” passports.
1998 and 2000, Comections Corporation of America (aka Prison Realty)
shares fel rom $40 10 52, Wackenhut shares fel from $30 to $9 (Martin, 2001).
7 In Septefber 2000, the State of Louisiana agreed in federal court o cease
contracting with privately run juverile faciltes afir an investigation found boys i
. Wackenhuf's Jena facilty had been abused with pepper spray and tear gas and denied
basic needy from underwear o food (Martn, 2001).
8 Kemba Smith's case is a composite of factors which make her both representative
‘of and difiérent from the majorty of women incarcerated as a resulf of the war on
drugs. As dn African American woman, young mother and victim of domestic
violence. she i typical enough (o become a symbol of the ani-war on drugs
‘campaign. As & middle class, articulate student, she s clearly umypical, yet her class
status strerigthens the message (o ‘middle America’, that this could happen 10 *your
daugier”
9 This has ot been the case, instead, criminalization and targeting by law
enforcemedt anificially inflae th price of drugs, o that manufacturing, rafficking
and sellingjthem become immensely profitable and increasi
crack-cocaine disparty also feeds the disproportionate impact on
women of mutually profitable rlationship between law enforcement and the drug
de has ben beled the “intemationa drug complex” (Van Der Veen, 2000).
0 In Latini America, the war on drugs has been a military war.
Louie, 2001; Shiva, 2001). Less attention has been paid to the repressive penal 17

|

Since 1989, Colombia has seen deployment of US military personnel, fina
assisance for policing. provision of attack helicoptrs and weaponry (o as:
fight against “narcoterrorist. This fight has been closely associated with

insurgency measures against eft wing guerilas such as the FARC and ELJ
thus fuelled a bitte civl war. US counter-

destroyed the rainforest and polluted the water table. For the impact o the
drugs on Colombian women. sce Sudbury (2001),

11 Although Dutch coffee shops selling cannabis and the Britsh practice
prescribing to heroin addicts have gone largely unaffected by the 1988 C
they are in opposition (o and theoretically threatened by its provisions.

12 In Winter 2000. the Metropolitan Police received 800,000 Britsh Poun
out Operation Crackdown, targeting low level dealers of crack and class A|

¢ of 700 private propertics, over 80 raids and 1,000 amests (1,
arrested in London Class A drugs offensive.” Press release, Metropolitan
03/2001). An evaluation of the Operation found it had *lttle discernible:
London’s crack trade which quickly adapted to meet continuing demand (i
al, 2001).

13 whww.vegamedia.com/Jamaica.

councilestates i boroughs with laree black populations. The Operation ?%w

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