Gender violence and the prison industrial complex (2001)
We call social justice movements to develop strategies and analysis that address both state AND interpersonal violence, particularly violence against women. Currently, activists/movements that address state violence (such as anti-prison, anti-police brutality groups) often work in isolation from activists/movements that address domestic and sexual violence. The result is that women of color, who suffer disproportionately from both state and interpersonal violence, have become marginalized within these movements. It is critical that we develop responses to gender violence that do not depend on a sexist, racist, classist, and homophobic criminal justice system. It is also important that we develop strategies that challenge the criminal justice system and that also provide safety for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. To live violence free-lives, we must develop holistic strategies for addressing violence that speak to the intersection of all forms of oppression.
The anti-violence movement has been critically important in breaking the silence around violence against women and providing much-needed services to survivors. However, the mainstream anti-violence movement has increasingly relied on the criminal justice system as the front-line approach toward ending violence against women of color. It is important to assess the impact of this strategy.
- Law enforcement approaches to violence against women MAY deter some acts of violence in the short term. However, as an overall strategy for ending violence, criminalization has not worked. In fact, the overall impact of mandatory arrests laws for domestic violence have led to decreases in the number of battered women who kill their partners in self-defense, but they have not led to a decrease in the number of batterers who kill their partners. Thus, the law protects batterers more than it protects survivors.
- The criminalization approach has also brought many women into conflict with the law, particularly women of color, poor women, lesbians, sex workers, immigrant women, women with disabilities, and other marginalized women. For instance, under mandatory arrest laws, there have been numerous incidents where police officers called to domestic incidents have arrested the woman who is being battered. Many undocumented women have reported cases of sexual and domestic violence, only to find themselves deported. A tough law and order agenda also leads to long punitive sentences for women convicted of killing their batterers. Finally, when public funding is channeled into policing and prisons, budget cuts for social programs, including women's shelters, welfare and public housing are the inevitable side effect. These cutbacks leave women less able to escape violent relationships.
- Prisons don't work. Despite an exponential increase in the number of men in prisons, women are not any safer, and the rates of sexual assault and domestic violence have not decreased. In calling for greater police responses to and harsher sentences for perpetrators of gender violence, the anti-violence movement has fueled the proliferation of prisons which now lock up more people per capita in the U.S. than any other country. During the past fifteen years, the numbers of women, especially women of color in prison has skyrocketed. Prisons also inflict violence on the growing numbers of women behind bars. Slashing, suicide, the proliferation of HIV, strip searches, medical neglect and rape of prisoners has largely been ignored by anti-violence activists. The criminal justice system, an institution of violence, domination, and control, has increased the level of violence in society.
- The reliance on state funding to support anti-violence programs has increased the professionalization of the anti-violence movement and alienated it from its community-organizing, social justice roots. Such reliance has isolated the anti-violence movement from other social justice movements that seek to eradicate state violence, such that it acts in conflict rather than in collaboration with these movements.
- The reliance on the criminal justice system has taken power away from women's ability to organize collectively to stop violence and has invested this power within the state. The result is that women who seek redress in the criminal justice system feel disempowered and alienated. It has also promoted an individualistic approach toward ending violence such that the only way people think they can intervene in stopping violence is to call the police. This reliance has shifted our focus from developing ways communities can collectively respond to violence.
In recent years, the mainstream anti-prison movement has called important attention to the negative impact of criminalization and the build-up of the prison industrial complex. Because activists who seek to reverse the tide of mass incarceration and criminalization of poor communities and communities of color have not always centered gender and sexuality in their analysis or organizing, we have not always responded adequately to the needs of survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
- Prison and police accountability activists have generally organized around and conceptualized men of color as the primary victims of state violence. Women prisoners and victims of police brutality have been made invisible by a focus on the war on our brothers and sons. It has failed to consider how women are affected as severely by state violence as men. The plight of women who are raped by INS officers or prison guards, for instance, has not received sufficient attention. In addition, women carry the burden of caring for extended family when family and community members are criminalized and wherehoused. Several organizations have been established to advocate for women prisoners; however, these groups have been frequently marginalized within the mainstream anti-prison movement.
- The anti-prison movement has not addressed strategies for addressing the rampant forms of violence women face in their everyday lives, including street harassment, sexual harassment at work, rape, and intimate partner abuse. Until these strategies are developed, many women will feel shortchanged by the movement. In addition, by not seeking alliances with the anti-violence movement, the anti-prison movement has sent the message that it is possible to liberate communities without seeking the well-being and safety of women.
- The anti-prison movement has failed to sufficiently organize around the forms of state violence faced by LGBTI communities. LGBTI street youth and trans people in general are particularly vulnerable to police brutality and criminalization. LGBTI prisoners are denied basic human rights such as family visits from same sex partners, and same sex consensual relationships in prison are policed and punished.
- While prison abolitionists have correctly pointed out that rapists and serial murderers comprise a small number of the prison population, we have not answered the question of how these cases should be addressed. The inability to answer the question is interpreted by many anti-violence activists as a lack of concern for the safety of women
- The various alternatives to incarceration that have been developed by anti-prison activists have generally failed to provide sufficient mechanism for safety and accountability for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. These alternatives often rely on a romanticized notion of communities, which have yet to demonstrate their commitment and ability to keep women and children safe or seriously address the sexism and homophobia that is deeply embedded within them.
We call on social justice movements concerned with ending violence in all its forms to:
- Develop community-based responses to violence that do not rely on the criminal justice system AND which have mechanisms that ensure safety and accountability for survivors of sexual and domestic violence.Transformative practices emerging from local communities should be documented and disseminated to promote collective responses to violence.
- Critically assess the impact of state funding on social justice organizations and develop alternative fundraising strategies to support these organizations. Develop collective fundraising and organizing strategies for anti-prison and anti-violence organizations. Develop strategies and analysis that specifically target state forms of sexual violence.
- Make connections between interpersonal violence, the violence inflicted by domestic state institutions (such as prisons, detention centers, mental hospitals, and child protective services), and international violence (such as war, military base prostitution, and nuclear testing).
- Develop an analysis and strategies to end violence that do not isolate individual acts of violence (either committed by the state or individuals) from their larger contexts. These strategies must address how entire communities of all genders are affected in multiple ways by both state violence and interpersonal gender violence. Battered women prisoners represent an intersection of state and interpersonal violence and as such provide and opportunity for both movements to build coalitions and joint struggles.
- Put poor/working class women of color in the center of their analysis, organizing practices, and leadership development. Recognize the role of economic oppression, welfare "reform," and attacks on women workers' rights in increasing women's vulnerability to all forms of violence and locate anti-violence and anti-prison activism alongside efforts to transform the capitalist economic system.
- Center stories of state violence committed against women of color in our organizing efforts.
- Oppose legislative change that promotes prison expansion,criminalization of poor communities and communities of color and thus state violence against women of color, even if these changes also incorporate measure to support victims of interpersonal gender violence.
- Promote holistic political education at the everyday level within our communities, specifically how sexual violence helps reproduce the colonial, racist, capitalist, heterosexist, and patriarchal society we live in as well as how state violence produces interpersonal violence within communities.
- Develop strategies for mobilizing against sexism and homophobiaWITHIN our communities in order to keep women safe.
- Challenge men of color and all men in social justice movements to take particular responsibility to address and organize around gender violence in their communities as a primary strategy for addressing violence and colonialism. We challenge men to address how their own histories of victimization have hindered their ability to establish gender justice in their communities.
- Link struggles for personal transformation and healing with struggles for social justice.
We seek to build movements that not only end violence, but that create a society based on radical freedom, mutual accountability, and passionate reciprocity. In this society, safety and security will not be premised on violence or the threat of violence; it will be based on a collective commitment to guaranteeing the survival and care of all peoples.
American Friends Service Committee
Arab Women's Solidarity Association, North America
Arab Women's Solidarity Association, San Francisco Chapter
Arizona Prison Moratorium Coalition
Asian Women’s Shelter
Audre Lorde Project
Black Radical Congress
Break the Chains
California Coalition for Women Prisoners
CARA / Communities Against Rape and Abuse (Seattle)
Center for Human Rights Education
Center for Immigrant Families
Center for Law and Justice
Coalition of Women from Asia and the Middle East
Colorado Progressive Alliance
Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (New York)
Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation (Vancouver)
East Asia-US-Puerto Rico Women's Network Against Militarism
Institute of Lesbian Studies
Korean American Coalition to End Domestic Abuse
Lavender Youth Recreation & Information Center (San Francisco)
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
Minnesota Black Political Action Committee
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects
National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (Seattle)
Pennsylvania Lesbian and Gay Task Force
Prison Activist Resource Center
San Francisco Women Against Rape
Shimtuh Korean Domestic Violence Program
Sista II Sista
Southwest Youth Collaborative (Chicago)
Spear and Shield Publications, Chicago
Women of All Red Nations
Women of Color Resource Center
Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (Bronx)
Debra M. Akuna
Helen Arnold, Office of Sexual Misconduct Prevention & Education, Columbia University
Molefe Asante, Temple University
Rjoya K. Atu
Karen Baker, National Sexual Violence Resource Center
Rachel Baum, National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects
Elham Bayour, Women’s Empowerment Project (Gaza, Palestine)
Zoe Abigail Bermet
Eulynda Toledo-Benalli, Dine' Nation, First Nations North & South
Diana Block, California Coalition for Women Prisoners
Marilyn Buck, Political Prisoner
Lee Carroll, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Emma Catague, API Women & Safety Center
Ann Caton, Young Women United
mariama changamire, department of communication umass amherst
Eunice Cho, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
Sunjung Cho, KACEDA and Asian Community Mental Health Services
Dorie D. Ciskowsky
Cori Couture, BAMM
Kimberle Crenshaw, UCLA Law School
Shamita Das Dasgupta, Manavi, Inc.
Angela Y. Davis, University of California - Santa Cruz
Jason Durr, University of Hawaii School of Social Work
Michael Eric Dyson, University of Pennsylvania
Michelle Erai, Santa Cruz Commission for the Prevention of Violence Against Women
Edna Frantela, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Loretta Frederick, Battered Women’s Justice Project
Arnoldo Garcia, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
Dionne Grigsby, University of Hawaii Outreach College
Lara K. Grimm
Elizabeth Harmuth, Prison Activist Resource Center
Will Harrell, ACLU of Texas
Sarah Hoagland, Institute of Lesbian Studies
Katayoun Issari, Family Peace Center (Hawaii)
Desa Jacobsson, Anti-Violence Activist (Alaska)
Joy James, Brown University
Jamie Jimenez, Northwestern Sexual Assault education Prevention Program
Isabel Kang, Dorean American Coalition for Ending Domestic Abuse
Valli Kanuha, Asian Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence
Mimi Kim, Asian Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence
Paul Kivel, Violence Prevention Educator
M. Carmen Lane, Anti-violence activist
In Hui Lee, KACEDA
Meejeon Lee, Shimtuh & KACEDA
Beckie Masaki, Asian Women's Shelter
Ann Rhee Menzie, SHIMTUH & KACEDA
Sarah Kim-Merchant, KACEDA
Patricia Manning, Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) Volunteer
Kristin Millikan, Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network
Steven Morozumi, Programs Adviser, Univ. of Oregon Multicultural Center
Soniya Munshi, Manavi
Sylvia Nam, KACEDA & KCCEB(Korean Community Center of the East Bay)
Stormy Ogden, American Indian Movement
Margo Okazawa-Rey, Mills College
Angela Naomi Paik
Ellen Pence, Praxis
Trity Pourbahrami, University of Hawaii
Laura Pulido, University of Southern California
Matt Remle, Center for Community Justice
Monique Rhodes, Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault
Beth Richie, African American Institute on Domestic Violence
David Rider, Men Can Stop Rape
Clarissa Rojas, Latino Alianza Against Domestic Violence
Paula Rojas, Refuio/Refuge (New York)
Tricia Rose, University of California - Santa Cruz
Katheryn Russell-Brown, University of Maryland
Ann Russo, Women’s Studies Program, DePaul University
Anuradha Sharma, Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence
David Thibault Rodriguez, South West Youth Collaborative
Roxanna San Miguel
Karen Shain, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
Proshat Shekarloo, Oakland
Anita Sinha, Attorney - Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
Barbara Smith, Founder - Kitchen Table Press
Matthea Little Smith
Natalie Sokoloff, John Jay College of Criminal Justice - C.U.N.Y.
Kabzuag Vaj, Hmong American Women Association
Janelle White, Leanne Knot Violence Against Women Consortium.
Laura Whitehorn, Former Political Prisoner
Sherry Wilson, Women of All Red Nations
Yon Soon Yoon, KACEDA
Mieko Yoshihama, University of Michigan School of Social Work
Tukufu Zuberi, Center for Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania