Community of the Condemned; 15; Women Behind Bars

The over 8,000 women offenders in US jails and penitentiaries present very special problems to the prison authorities. The impact of imprisonment has a special significance for women. This is the community of the condemned. The story of the forgotten ones, in the world in which they live, the jails and prisons of America. What are they like? Here is the story as told by leading prison authorities and by the prisoners themselves. For the educational television and radio center and featuring Joseph D. Lohman, eminent sociologist and for four years Sheriff of Cook County, Illinois.

Few of us have occasioned to know women who have been in jail and even fewer who have been in a penitentiary. And this is not surprising since females make up only 5% of the American penal population. We send fewer women to jail in the first instance, primarily because a woman must commit a shocking crime indeed and be completely rejected by the community before the courts are disposed to incarcerate a woman. And so we are in the direction of using jails and penitentiaries with less readiness in the case of women than is the case with men. And from this perhaps there is a lesson to be learned. For by the same token there are fewer women who once they have been in jails or penitentiaries ever return again.

They are not subjected in the same degree to the confirming influences of the penitentiary and the jail, which makes them permanently criminals on the other side of the law. Who are these women who go to our penitentiaries? They are for the most part compulsive offenders who cannot control themselves, persons who have committed crimes of passion and most dramatic of all, those who have suffered such a loss of reputation and status that we cannot keep them in the free community. And these we put aside in institutions. From the whole there are problems in the penitentiaries and the jails are the same as those of the men. But they do not come back so often and this is instructive. As I have indicated they do not come back because they have not been subjected to the influences which make them come back. They are not repeaters because in less a degree do they reflect the influence of the prison or the jail. This should be a lesson to us with reference to what could be done with more men and

more younger persons, namely deal with them as we do successfully in the free community. When a woman leaves the penitentiary or a jail her difficulties are not the same as those of a man. In the first place she does not necessarily have to find a job and therefore be accepted in the community in terms of her experience as an ex inmate. She may indeed get lost in the community. Forgotten is her career and her past. She may become a wife and a mother and as a result of that be entirely lost to the former experience without stigma, without this alienation and estrangement which has the effect of putting persons permanently on the other side of the law. We have for the most part provided for women in jails and penitentiaries services which are designed to facilitate their reintroduction to the free community and to make it possible for them to be lost amongst free men without this stigma and this rejection by the wider community.

The impact of the prisoner of the jail upon women is no different than that of the effect upon men to make life livable under the circumstances, to maintain self-respect and self-confidence, to look to the future. Fortunately, in most jurisdictions we do not find it necessary to use bars to confine women. The average women's reformatory is a quite different kind of a place than is represented by the reformatories for men or the penitentiaries for men. Whenever this kind of an experience is visited upon the women, the barrier between the guards and the matrons and the women themselves is as strong as the experience between a male inmate population and a prison administration. Now let us turn to the human side of this picture of women in jails and penitentiaries. Here in my office with me is a young lady that's just been released from one of America's largest county jails.

Let's get her view of the operation of the American penal system. It's impact upon the female prisoner. Jean, you've just come out of the county jail, I understand. Yes, I have. How long were you there? I was there for a month. Have you been in other institutions, other jails or penitentiaries? Yes, I was in the House of Detention in New York City in Barnesville in Cleveland, Ohio in the district jail in Washington, the federal penitentiary at Austin, West Virginia, and the public health hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. Well, that adds up to quite a bit of time. How long have you spent behind prison walls? Well, all together about four years in the various institutions. Well, now, Jean, you've been four years in penitentiaries and jails and association with other women that are in prison, then, with men in some of those institutions. Just what is the special impact of the prison on a woman? Is it different from that of the men? Well, I think the impact is on the male is quite different from the impact on the female due to the fact that the man has looked for to go out into society and earn a living and

get a job and resume the responsibility of the head of a family, wherein at all times it isn't necessary for the woman to be faced directly with the problem as it is with the man because sometimes the woman has a family that is able to, she's able to resume her place with her family again, or she has a husband or she's fortunate enough to marry a man that is in position to take care of her and society isn't always is apt to ask whether a woman came from or where she's been or what her background is. That sense, then, the woman loses herself, so to speak, in the community, more frequently on release. Then a man does, unless she goes back to the same routine of crime and all that she did before she was released. Well, Jean, that's what interests us, and we like to get a picture of the influence of the prison or the jail experience on a person such as yourself, that is to say, what

happens there? To what extent does it address the problems that you bring inside the jail of the Penitentiary? Well, in comparison, I can say less for the Chicago jails than I can for, I mean, in a way of complement of jails that to be complemented, then I can for jails and other sections of the country, because seemingly I have found the Chicago Penal Systems more lax in providing for the needs of the prisoner while they are in jail, such as rehabilitation facilities, work, pay, and parole arrangements. None of that seems to be taken care of, and the prisoners have a lot of loose time on their hands that they are just fritter away sitting practically in one spot with no work, no outlets, nothing to do but just spend an entire day waiting for a bedtime and time to rise and do the same thing over day in and day out.

Well, Jean, what other institutions have you been in, whether it's been a more positive influence? Well, in Warren'sville, the women's end of it was two buildings, a women's unit and a men's unit. Well, I can't say too much about what it went on in the men's unit, but I spent a year in the Warren'sville jail there, and in a way of speaking and comparison to some jails that housed, say, a hundred or two hundred women prisoners, it was a type of finishing school to some women that had never had any outside advantages. Everything was provided to rehabilitate the individual. Of course, it's up to the individual themselves as to the slant they take on the menace to the society that their crime has been, and how they want to go about correcting their lives. Well, to what extent, Jean, would you say in your overall experience in federal institutions, in some of these eastern jails and here in the Midwest, to what extent have you found a tendency on the part of the administration to really tailor a program to the needs of

the individual who is there? Well, that is a point I'm trying to bring out that in Chicago there's practically no tailoring. There's no pre-sentence investigation. The heads of the institution know nothing about the individual only as a name and a number and a card history that doesn't contain too much information on the person as a person. And the matrons, gods, and whoever has to do the handling of the prisoners are more less kept outside of the tears and they have no direct contact with the individual about any of their problems. Even the social service should be available at all times to the individual with their problems and just giving them a chance to work with the courts and with the heads of the institution. But none of those conditions exist here. But in other institutions, the social service, the psychiatric departments, the occupational therapy, the work, everything is taken care of by different agencies.

Well, you say you've been at Lexington and at Alderson to our two federal institutions. Can you contrast the character of that program with your experience within these jails where there are only very limited facilities? Well, to begin with, in Alderson, with Virginia, when you were a recent institution and you're placed in cottages, you're placed in a receiving cottage which is to orient you with the general routine of the running of the place and how you to live daily. And then you're sent to different cottages and they try to group you as to age and to crime and to sort of mingle certain types of personalities together for Mohamonist prison life. And then while you're in this admission cottage, you go through all your physical examinations, you examine physically and teeth, eyes, everything that you could possibly need so that in the event that something comes up after where they will know to expect it or know that if

it's something of a new origin. Well, then I gather from Yuri Marx that in the typical jail, as exemplified by some of those that you've been in recently, all you do is just sit and stew and pass time away. What goes on amongst the prisoners under those circumstances? Well, some of them play cards and if there's a radio going, they dance and they sit around and gossip and look at each other and farm little petty hatreds and jealousies and keep up a lot of fussing and arguing and things that could be avoided if they have something to do because in the county jail where they're housed in one day room all day long, there's so much noise there that you couldn't even be quiet enough to read or to concentrate to do a crossword puzzle or do some artwork or anything unless you just forced yourself to do it under all that tension. Well, are there rules and regulations which secure a person under those circumstances, are those in any way impressing upon the individuals the need for going straight or what is the

effect upon them? Well, that depends on the individual. Some individuals become callous and they don't care, like a daisicle, they figure that if I do six months out of a year, that six months, I don't have to worry about how I'm going to get along. I don't have to worry about getting arrested and I get arrested and I can go out one of my times up and be on the loose until my next arrest and that's a general idea of the thing and that's where the prison heads could step in and know the person that has fallen into that pattern and if they found out his capabilities and his desire and willingness to do something different and if there was some job agencies and placement agencies and they could earn some money and they would not go out flat broke and just left to seek the same associates and do the same things that wouldn't be as likely that they would be returned so quickly.

Well, thank you very much, Gene, for this very illuminating insight into the life behind the fires of our woman's community of imprisoned persons. A goodly number of us have known a man or a boy who has been imprisoned in your formatory and jail or in training school, but very few of us have known women who have been imprisoned or jails or reformatized, but there are such and to give a picture of the mysteries of the woman's prison, let us turn to one of America's foremost experts in the administration of the woman's penitentiary. Our guest is Nina Kinsella, warden of the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia. Miss Kinsella is for eight years warden of that institution and in years before that associated with the federal system of prisons and also in state work, in corrections. Her institution at Alderson, West Virginia houses 525 women inmates, one of the largest

women's penitentiaries in the United States, or I should say reformatories in the United States, Miss Kinsella. How long have you been in this business of working with women in penitentiaries and how did you get interested in it? Well, I started work in the prison department in Boston in 1914, under civil service. In 1930, I went to Washington as executive assistant to the director and became also the supervisor of the jail inspection service throughout the country. Most people say why? Can you answer that? No. Well, no, it was a job given to me, a concerned woman, as well as men, and actually I took it in. Now you're at Alderson and you have this enormous for a woman's prison, or a reformatory population, and yet on the other hand, there are a few such institutions.

What is the ratio of women in prisons to men in prisons? I think of all the prisoners in custody that only 5% are women. Well, this would seem to suggest that there is some difference in the crime picture is between women and men. Does this reflect a difference in their disposition toward crime? Oh, I think definitely so. I think that women are less criminally inclined. I think they are not so vicious, and I really believe that they have a greater desire for respectability. Well, I suspect the rule that the woman plays in the family and her close association with the controls of these small groups of the family in the neighborhood may be reflected in her more responsible attitude toward the community and society. I think that's right, Chef. Well, now there are some, however, who come to prisons in reformatories, and you have a goodly number of them. What in your experience is the major cause of their criminality?

I think the major cause is broken homes, poor home conditions, lack of training in the respect for authority, authority in the home, authority in the school, the respect for fellow men's privileges and rights, and respect for religion. Well, now, as they come to the prison or the reformatory or the training school, women are not there in a association with men. This is, again, as a single-sex community. Are there different problems in administering the woman's prison or the woman's reformatory than in the administration of the men's institution? I think the administration is really the same. I don't think there's any great difference in the administration of a woman's institution. In fact, our institution, as well as all of the federal penitentiaries and reformatories operate under the same policies and the same philosophy.

As the director of the Bureau of prisons, James V. Bennett has promulgated. We operate under the same policies. Now, there is one great difference. And our institutions, our women, do have babies. And I think that you won't find that in the men's institution. Well, this, however, is a very special problem that doesn't relate particularly to criminality or any other aspect. That's right. Well, now, what about their return to crime or the degree to which they do not return to crime? Do they repeat, as frequently as the male recidivists, do they come back to your institution? No. I think they have a much better record in that respect. About 10 percent of the persons now in our custody have been with us once before. Only 10 percent. Only 10 percent. Well, that does compare quite favorably with the experience with a man. It goes considerably higher there. I think so.

Well, now, let's go inside your institution with you, if we may. Tell us a bit about your program and how you work specifically with men under the conditions of confinement. Well, in the first place, Sheriff, our whole philosophy is to prepare them to go out better than they were when they came in. Now we have an educational program, a work program, a vocational training program, a religious program, recreation. We have everything that goes on in an outside community. We try to replace what they lacked or what they didn't profit by in the community. We have a very fine vocational training program. They can earn certificates from the state of West Virginia, the educational department provided. They take the work that is necessary, perform the un-the-job service, and complete their related education. They can get high school equivalent diplomas. They can get commercial certificates from the Greg system.

These certificates are in connection with particular trades or vocations, are they? That's right. We have vocational training for which certificates are issued in 11 areas. These include a garment shop, a laundry, painting, interior, and outside painting, a dairy, custodians work, which is very popular, a bakery, food service work, waitress work, cooking. We have all of those which a person can usually get a job on the outside. We have one other piece of work that is very interesting, the statistics for state and federal prisoners, which are published under the title of national statistics, the coding and the IBM punch work for those done by the girls at our institution. We have a regular office set up.

Of course also, inmates work in our offices, in the accounting office, in the school building. They work at everything. We have a fine crafts program too, occupational therapy. It's apparent from what you described here that these skills that they develop are very great importance and usefulness in the community and future job adjustment and so forth. But what do they mean to the inmates? Do they prize these things? Are they prize them highly? I've had a number of girls say to me, I am the only one in my family who never got a diploma. Now I want to take home a diploma. They call a certificate a diploma. As a matter of fact, we have graduation, similar to graduation outside. We present the diploma. The savings would be done in a regular school. And this year, we are very fortunate that our advisory board met at the institution and the director, Mr. James Lee Bennett, was there and presented the certificates and diplomas in June.

At that time, we had 87 such presented. Mr. Celler, let's take a look at another aspect of the prison problem as it relates to women. What about security? How do you maintain control? Can you keep them in or do they get away as they occasionally do in male institutions? Well, they occasionally get away, but actually we believe that with a good program, work program, keeping them busy and keeping them occupied, having them satisfied in that respect, that they stay there. And of course, they could walk away if they wanted to. We have an open institution. No walls. No walls. There is a, I might say, a flimsy fence, a wire fence, eight foot, which is not close to the buildings. We have 15 different housing units. So your protection and security is really not in the fence or in walls, but in the program that attracts and keeps them preoccupied? I think so.

And in their attitude to want to change themselves. And on Mr. Celler, how do you get women that are qualified to work in an institution of this kind? Where they come from? Sheriff, all of our employees are under civil service, the United States civil service. So of course, we recruit them from civil service registers. And we do have a fine in service training program, the same as in the other federal institutions. We have a chance to evaluate them at that time during that period. If they can't make the grade, if they do not have the ability to control, if they don't have the common sense to deal with human beings, that is the most important thing. We have a chance to terminate the services before the deprivation is up. So thereby, we get pretty good staff. Well, no, here you have a staff. Here you have a program, but here's a public that doesn't know much about what's going on in women's institutions like yours. How can the public relate to your program? Are there problems there?

Oh, I think the public could do a great deal. I think that if the organizations would get together and try to correct conditions in the community, which have led to the failure of these girls, now it could be in the home. And of course, that's reaching in pretty fast, but I still believe that greater effort should be made in the community to correct conditions that lead to these things. And second, I think that organizations could do a great deal in what we call sponsoring in a sponsorship program. Have a better attitude towards inmates when they're released, give them a helping hand, and be willing to let them earn their way the same as any other citizen. Well, thank you, Ms. Cancelo, for this very interesting trip inside of a woman's institution. Our guest has been Nina Canceler, a warden at the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia, the only Federal Reformatory for Women, one of the largest in

the United States with a population of 525. There are a few of us, indeed, who had reason to know a woman ex-continent. We don't know usually women who have gone to jail or have come out of penitentiaries. And this is an interesting comment on the problem, or it reflects the sense in which there are a few, in the first instance, who violate the law, still few, who are sent to penitentiaries, and indeed few, again, who we know as such, when they return to the free community, they are lost in it, received in it, and do not suffer the rejection and alienation that is characteristic of men who are sent to prison. Though women do not represent the quantitative problem that men do, there is, of course, still the problem of some 10,000 women in prison today.

These women reflect crimes that are seldom regarded as problematic, or they are not treated in the same way as severely and as graphically as is the case with men. Greater leniency, greater anticipation of our return, greater charity in the heart of the community. As a result of this, they do not even, while in prison, present the custodial problems of embittered men, hostile men, who act against the authority which has placed them there, vengeance and in bitterness. But women do become major problems in penitentiaries, in custody, when they are confronted by the same invitering experiences that have alienated the men. When they are restrained from conventional life, they return as recidivists, as repeaters to the penitentiary, as in the case of men. But the fewer who do return are in themselves a lesson of the greater acceptance, the greater disposition of a community, to give them opportunity, to lose them amongst us in conventional

life. What are the lessons to be learned from our experience in the imprisonment of women? It applies this lesson to both men and women. We should send fewer to prison in the first instance. Send fewer men, as we do send now fewer women, and as perhaps we could even send fewer of them. The great majority do not need the maximum security that we provide for men, for most of women live under conditions of middle or minimum security. And then there are the constructive influences which women have reflected in their future lives, which have made available generally to men, who would be reflected in their successful adjustment in the complete community. And finally, I should suggest that if the community is disposed to accept them after jail, after the penitentiary, they do not return as repeaters. This is the story of imprisonment of women, and is a lesson that could be properly applied to our whole miscreant population.

This has been community of the condemned, the story of the jails and prisons of America. Produced for the educational television and radio center, featuring Joseph D. Loman, eminent sociologist, and for four years, Sheriff of Cook County, Illinois. This is National Educational Television.