Title of Project: Voices Carry – The Women in Prison Project
Project Duration – May 27 2009 – May 27 2010 1 year
Project Director/Facilitator – Joyce Angela Jellison, Poet and Workshop Facilitator – Director of Write Out Loud:Transforming Our Lives Through Writing Our Truths
Goals of Project: To engage the narratives of women incarcerated in the Massachusetts Prison System. To empower these women through words and have them document were they are now emotionally, spiritually and physically. Those without power often urn this helplessness and perceived lack of power, onto themselves – studies of women in prison have shown as could be easily reasoned, that these women suffer from severe depression, a sense of disconnection from others and low self-esteem.
It is the goal of the Voice Carry project to heighten awareness of these and other issues that face women in prison. Voices Carry is not a prison reform program - it is simply a program allowing women behind bars to document for themselves who they are and what they want. Voices Carry is an attempt to introduce into the media landscape a demographic that is rarely heard if never heard. These women though separated from society are still essentially, a part of society – to neglect to read their words or acknowledge their experiences is in the opinion of Write Out Loud, a tragedy.
Finally, Voices Carry will produce a website, book and short film featuring the work of the women participating in the program. Students from Boston University’s Center for Digital Imaging will be invited to join the film producing aspect of the project. WOL staff will build the website and gather the information for the book which will be self-published by WOL and made available to the public. Proceeds from the sales of the book will help establish a fund for the children of the participants and benefit future WOL programs/projects.
Research: According to a March 2004 article in The Nation written by Rebecca Tuhus-Durrow, Outside of Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington DC Prisoners in 1997)
• In 1986, 12.0% of women Quentin Tarantino films, women who set out to go on bloody rampages are exceedingly rare. The far more typical female inmate is an addict who starts using drugs to deal with the trauma of childhood abuse and turns a few tricks to support her habit. Or the pawn who unwittingly gets caught serving as a "mule" in a drug deal. Or the abused partner who fires the household gun in desperation in a final fight. Indeed, female convicts across the board report alarming rates of abuse: in 1999, the federal government found that close to sixty percent of all women in state prisons nationwide suffered abusive histories.
Based on information gathered from http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/women_prison.pdf
• According to The Boston Globe, "nearly 26% of the nearly 2000 men and women crowding Massachusetts prisons for drug crimes are first-time offenders…. Worse, nearly three out of four drug traffickers who do get charged in major cases, but agree to forfeit substantial drug money to prosecutors, bargain their way out of the long sentences…. The result: those with no money or information to trade face the hard mandatory sentences."
• From 1986 to 1996, the number of women sentenced to state prison for drug crimes increased from 2,370 to 23,700. (
in prison were drug offenders. In 1991, 32.8% of women in prison were
incarcerated for drug offenses. (Women in Prison, Survey of State Prison Inmates, 1991. US Department of Justice, March 1994,
Discrimination Based on Race:
• Over a five-year period, the incarceration rate of African American women increased by 828%. (NAACP LDF Equal Justice Spring 1998.) An African American woman is eight times more likely than a European American woman is to be imprisoned; African American women make up nearly half of the nation’s female prison population, with most serving sentences for nonviolent drug or property related offenses.
• Latina women experience nearly four times the rates of incarceration as European American women.
• State and federal laws mandate minimum sentences for all drug offenders. This eliminates from judges the option of referring first time non-violent offenders to scarce, financially strapped drug treatment, counseling and education programs. The racial disparity revealed by the crack v. powder cocaine sentences insures that more African American women will land in prison. Although 2/3 of crack users are white or Hispanic, defendants convicted of crack cocaine possession in 1994 were 84.5% African American. Crack is the only drug that carries a mandatory prison sentence for first time possession in the federal system.
Funding: Currently, the project is without funding and an application will be submitted to New Voices for a possible grant of 25,000 if approved. In addition, fundraising will be iniatiated and maintained by WOL for the purposes of this project and other WOL programs.
