Woman; Women in Prison. Part 1

No. Welcome to woman tonight woman comes to you from station

in St. Louis Missouri for the first of a special two part look at women in prison. My guest tonight is Nancy who is a member of the women's film group here in St. Louis called tomato Productions. They have made a film in the women State Correctional Center at Tipton Missouri which we will see tonight. Next week we will speak with the two inmates who are featured in this week's film. Nancy welcome to women. Thank you. What is the title of the film like. I think we better look at it and then you and I will talk. My favorite. Now that's really glamorous looking bunch of uniforms because in case you catch your man

this is a rehearsal photograph after we see from April in Paris. And I'm the drummer back here in the center where the curtain part. Did you do everything. Yeah time yeah. I think what I miss most about Hollywood are the commissary studio

restaurant. I remember the wonderful beautiful creative from the costume era of electricity. Certain people who would walk in like Gable where the whole room was simply electrified. One of the things studio commissary with a guard who were finished with it had not been resigned to contract. They used to come into the studio commissary with brand and of course the word was around Hollywood. You can't be signed to a seven year contract although the actors at that particular moment was not too old. No one would know that for years they and everybody. This was a very very sad thing because the star was like a champion. The public still clamored after her autograph and

followed her down the street and no one knew she was finished except people in the studio commissary. Hey you know I ride to Pittston with thirty seven fans in the clothes we had on our back. We deposited this with great care at the front desk and then we knew we were on our way to isolation. This was like a prison inmate inside a prison. We were led downstairs to the basement and there were little concrete cells a bunk an open toilet a couple of dusty books. On the window sill and then where's your medical isolation. The only noises that came through to us were from the business office which was located across the way from the cells. You'd hear a few people coming and going and you'd listen to the sounds because these were the sounds of other human voices.

But at four o'clock when that business office closed and you heard the iron gate clang behind you it's completely silent. The only other sound you heard for the rest of the night was the dinner tray which was unceremoniously shoved to you you thought I handed that pepper in a tray was shoved under a crack in the door. We were taken out for showers daily maybe as we call or the one who gave us showers and maybe is the one who had to dress shop now called boutique. This is the room where donated clothing and shoes are given to the women who arrive with no clothes or waiting on their clothes are some who never get any clothes from home. The state gives you one print dress a couple of pairs of pajamas a print robe and

some underwear and a bit. So we had to go shopping at many to take. After doing my shopping when I got back to the bank and sat down I really began to realize the economic situation that we were in I think it is that when you're committed to a state institution all you need you're provided for within reason. Discounting luxury items however this isn't true. We were informed for the first three months we would be there two dollars a month from State College. After three months he would receive three dollars a month and this is it this is the limit to which you would go when Carol and I first came up from isolation and then I was assigned a law degree. My

profession the revisions and the writer I went down to the laundry and there wasn't enough work for any of the women down there to do to keep them busy. It was such a waste of time such a waste of people it made me feel completely useless and hopeless. I knew that I was requesting instead of progress and I knew that I had a long long period of time to do and the few skills I had would be completely depleted if this is the way I was going to spend all of my time in prison. This is the one word when I look around the penitentiary and find people spending four five six seven years. This is the one word that I could summon all of him in that way. Not enough work not enough. OK shows and great ways people. Chipped in and said you play physically.

That's the opportunity for jobs for the women within the institution. There's a very small range. There are three large maintenance type jobs available that were closed for the women the new women coming in are made and the kitchen and the monu which does the laundry for that in 2000 alone we have had it kind of nurse's aid was brought and now been discontinued because of lack of funds for two years we were fortunate enough to have college courses available which we no longer have for the same reason. This is clearly a good thing for the women doing a long period of time because once you've completed what few things are offered there there is nowhere to go. And with the line there are one or two one woman job one of which I

have that teacher's aide. As you begin to kid as a productive wage you are no doubt down a period of duration and pressure in a more complex working environment. Knowledge technology has played a role. For example incoming telephone call to a PRI or it is a whole but let's name one little thing to you know when you come to a period here at the end of the sentence make a little pause there to complete that thought instead of just keeping going. OK that's really good you can do I

read that. I'm trying to kind of you know I feel sure you'll make it in July. I hope so. Before you get out you know. You know after being here and really I have every confidence you're going to. We have another ship that is a great treat and that Saturday night. This is a great event. When you first knew we had Kool Aid This is a big treat.

Fewer and fewer girls go along with social activities because they only make you sad. You're searching for something there. You know we've been here for years and years. I really feel like we've reached about as much time as we can do. You know we first continue in a criminology course really feel like I'm going to

get out of here. I mean as a person but it gets harder and harder as time goes on in here. With the stuff they do the college courses it just about did it. But another thing another thing to Peggy is that here even she would be granted a parole. Say it to four and a half five years. It's against the parole rules to associate. And we've lived together for 12 years and this would be just like a return ticket. I I miss California man in a way although I know California has changed drug wise. You know when you and I started using things were much different it was thought of as a little bit naughty perhaps that people were around and we admired. Good

to me it was musicians I Walk Into A Room And here's everybody that I admire and you think Lee using heroin so this had to be all right for me and I know the same thing happened with you around the studios. But I really hope would happen. The ideal would be to get that sentence commuted to something a little more reasonable. Go back out to college I'd like you continue very much with criminology and and sociology. I've certainly seen been a participant. In a penitentiary and with a little academic knowledge for half a second be put to use. I don't feel light headed it was shock that we spoke about where you could really make your jewelry and I could continue with my crocheting and you know perhaps a little circulating librarian develop a group of friends. Conversation is a little salon. I think that perhaps since we are a

small institution the staff in my relation is quite different than it is in the larger larger institutions as we learn each individual very well and each individual has their own favorite people. Not that they treat them any different but they do have some people that they prefer to ask things and then in turn the staff have some people that they can better work with and better understand their problems. The staff is a very compassionate staff but in the last couple of years in the new concept of prison reforms it has been difficult to turn ourselves around from custody and to treatment. And this is what I think prisons crime Corrections is all about. Of course there are times when we do have problems because the women are adults and they do it and they resent being told everything to do when you take the freedom away from an individual.

Naturally they're going to be unhappy with the person that is the most involved and in this instance it is the staff and all institutions I believe there is a breakdown of communication between that if an inmate because there is no woman to woman conversation. In fact an inmate really has nowhere to go if she's in trouble. I am sure that some of the women would tell you that they resent certain aspects of staff but I think overall they say they like them. There is a difference between lacking and respect. And in this capacity respect is more important than liking for the simple reason that we must discipline the women and we must strive to make them into a lighty and to start to situate them to go back into society as productive citizens as this is what the ultimate goal of the Department of Correction needs

corrections as to vary some of the very same things that make survival possible here are the opposite of what you need to get a line out there and this is what isn't taught in any kind of Chancery. You know the lack of. And things like this and these are the things you need to get along in a competitive world. I think one of the things we must learn is that we are not a punishment that is not our capacity to punish people but rather to help them to adjust to doing time. Women have different ways of doing time. Some of them take advantages of the programs offered. Others spend their time TAR Manning are creating problems and others like their time a while. It's most difficult I'm sure to always do

constructive things when there aren't enough constructive things to do. And it's also difficult to know what is constructive and what isn't. Lot of them have never disciplined their lives so discipline is one of the things I do not understand. I think one of the most insidious things about a women's prison is that almost all of the women's prison in America on the surface when you see the exterior even go inside of them. They're not big cell blocks and bars of steel and things like that is in fact some of the rather nice looking peaceful looking the observer or the visitor who walks through them. But prison isn't just contained within a certain area of ground within certain building areas being sent to prisoners being sent away from everyone you care about

from everyone you know from opportunities from your job through your employment. You just come to prison completely empty as a person and you can't live on the street and live inside too. You have to cut one away and you have to exist in prison so you have to wean yourself away from those you love the house or you tear yourself apart. I get really discouraged and of course the more time that we began the more depressed I've become lately. You know from the simplest things like like trying to get out on a college campus which the men do and writing letters to legislators about this is he was like that you can keep pushing it and keep trying but for how long. Well the idea is don't give up because it will

always come out a smile like a rule. Nancy thank you and tomatoes for sharing that with us. What it what did it feel like when you first went to Tipton. Well we were really nervous when we were driving to tiffin for the first time because we had a lot of preconceived notions about what women in prison were going to be like and we were

afraid that they might not react well to us that they would assume that we didn't know anything about their lives. And so we were really anxious about going into the prison. But once we were there I met Peggy and Carol became quite comfortable. Did you initially have one idea for approach an approach to the film and then you. Did you change along the way. Well the only idea that we had before we met Carol was that we would try to do a film that would be their story and this is what we told them we first met that we would never really know what it's like to be in prison so that we would try to do would be to find out from pagan Kara what their experience was and what things they would like to say in making the film. And we did stick with that and it worked out well because I think it made it a very legitimate kind of statement. I don't know that it represents how all the women in Tipton feel but I think it does represent Carol. Do you think because a group of women made the film that it was different than say a crew from NBC News going into Tipton to make a documentary. Or do you think.

Yeah I think it was different the fact that we were women and the fact that we weren't experienced filmmakers both had a big influence on the film. Equally I think. For one thing we didn't have any strong notions of how the film should be done. It was a learning experience for all of us it was our first film. And we were pretty open to having things change as we went along to finding out from Peggy and Carol what they thought would be a good idea for the film. And are being women I think Peggy and Kara were more comfortable in talking to us. We were able to be within the prison and observe the prison and travel throughout the building which men would have been allowed to do. And I think we had kind of a sense of kinship with pagan Carol because we were all women that got us off to a good start. Did you have a script. To begin with you know we never really did have a script. What we did was to ask Peggy and Carol to record their thoughts when we were there and also when we weren't we left them a recorder. And we listened to the tape recordings and from that we chose some of the statements and areas of discussion that we thought were really pertinent. That we

chose visual images to go with that. And structured it from there. Which came first the need to make a film or concern for women in prison. What really came first was the need to have experience in film making all of us were interested in film. Sally page and I had had some experience with film but we recognized that it would be a long time before we would actually hold a camera or direct the same. So we decided to get together a small group of women and create the opportunity to make a film. After we'd been together for about a year we read an article about Peggy and Carol that happened to be in the newspaper and. We were really interested in meeting them and so then we decided that our first film would be about them. I think there's a tremendous mystique about filmmaking and especially for women because they don't always have the technical knowledge did you find that to be true. Definitely I think that we had to break that down for ourselves. It was a little bit scary at first because we did not know what we were doing. We started out we asked a lot of questions

and there was also a problem of going up to manage saying look you know how to operate these things will you tell us and we decided well ask anybody who can help us. And so that's what we did. And. Slowly we gain the knowledge and and it was a first venture we didn't plan for it to be totally professional. The first time we went down to the prison we forgot to find out what the combination was to the lock on the camera case that we had borrowed. So we couldn't get to our camera we had about five women in the prison who were sure they could pick a lock for us but they didn't succeed so that was our first shoot and it was nice just to keep trying and to be able to produce a film even though we were learning as we did it. I hesitate to say this but how many to many. There are four tomatoes and there are a number of women who have assisted us for instance the music was written by a woman and Heath who is a student here in St. Louis and the still photographs. These were women who we approached and and explained that our budget was low but if they would be interested in working with

us we would like to have their assistance. And we found that we were able along the line to find women who had the skills that we needed. Are you still a collective I know you began that way. We're still a collective. We found out that when it gets right down to producing a film we needed to have very specific jobs and responsibilities. But what we hope is that the collective will grow and that other women in the area of St. Louis who want to learn about film can come and have the kind of experience that we did who have other kinds of skills that they can help us with. Well join us on that little girl. Do you have a specific project in mind for the future. Well we have a couple of possible projects that we're interested in but the first thing we want to do is to expand the group and to bring in more women and before we make any decisions about what we'll do we want to find out who else is going to be working with us and take it from there to anything go wrong we have about one minute Did anything go wrong when you were making the film. Well we had our little problems. I would say that one of the things it was a something going wrong exactly but one of the real limitations was

that we wanted to be sensitive to those women in the prison who didn't want to have their picture taken. Now apparently legally we could have gone in and filmed because it's a state institution. But we tried to do was just to film those women who didn't and understood what it would mean to be on a film that would be shown nationally. And for that reason a lot of times we missed a lot of really nice things that occurred that we would have liked or had to edit out some of the things because we did want to try to be sensitive to the needs of the women in the prison. What are your future plans for like a rose is it available for people who are interested in having copies of it or renting. Yes we're going to have it distributed. The best thing for now I think would be for people who are interested to write to you what woman and you I can give you the distribution information as we have it. Nancy thank you very much for being thank you. Thank you for watching and good night. Production provided by public television stations Foundation

and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Meet.