Campaign launched against women’s jail
By
the Women’s Fightback Network
Boston
Published Jul 28, 2005 8:45 PM
Members
of the Massachusetts Statewide Harm Reduction Coalition (ShaRC) and supporters
held a media conference at the State House July 13 to announce a statewide
campaign demanding a moratorium on all jail and prison construction in
Massachusetts—including a proposed $27-million women’s jail in
Chicopee, located in Western Massachusetts.
“The U.S. has the
highest rate of incarceration in the world,” said Holly Richardson of Out
Now, a SHaRC member. “We are calling for—at the very
minimum—no further increase in the number of people going into prisons or
jails, and no increase in prison beds.”
Many emphasized the systemic
racist character of the prison-industrial complex, especially the increasing
incarceration of women of color, the fastest-growing population in jails and
prisons.
Solobia Hutchins, a SHaRC organizer, said, “Women should
get the services they need while incarcerated, but the truth is that I
don’t want women to be imprisoned in the first place. The truth is that
there’s almost no low-income housing in Western Massachusetts, drug
treatment beds have been cut by 60 percent and there are no real living-wage
jobs. At the same time, we’re locking up more and more poor women and
women of color for economic and health-care reasons. We don’t need 200
more prison beds for women. We don’t need jail
expansion.”
Iris Wallace, of the Springfield-based Arise for Social
Justice, explained, “Often when women are put behind bars families are
torn apart; children get cut off from their families, and many end up in the
Department of Social Services. Sometimes women are left to wait more than a year
for their day in court because they have no money for bail. There are many
better ways to spend money. How about helping women make it out here, instead of
setting us up for failure?”
Other speakers included Boston City
Councilors Chuck Turner and Felix Arroyo; ACLU-Massachusetts Executive Director
Carol Rose; the family of Kelly Jo Griffen, who died from lack of medical care
while in prison; Susan Mortimer, a long-time anti-prison activist whose severely
disabled brother is experiencing ongoing medical, mental and physical abuse in
the Massachusetts prison system; Keith Harvey, executive director of the New
England Regional Office of American Friends Service Committee; Judith Roderick,
community activist and resident of District 7 in Boston, and Robert Dellelo,
AFSC.
The young women of Reflect and Strengthen provided creative
political expression.
After the media conference SHaRC members delivered
petitions with more than 2,000 signatures of Mas sa chusetts residents in
support of a moratorium to Gov. Mitt Romney. SHaRC is asking that supporters
call Romney at (617) 725-4005 to oppose the Chicopee jail and all new jail and
prison construction in Massachusetts.
Declared Wallace, “We need to
keep up the fight ... . We need affordable housing, health care for all, public
transportation, better schools, real childcare and social services, summer youth
employment programs and so much more.”
For more information on the
SHaRC prison moratorium campaign, visit www.stopchicopeejail.org or call (413)
348-8234.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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