Blog #17

The NBC video, “Lockup - Inside North Carolina Women s Prison par NBC News Specials”, was extremely interesting. The inside look of the women’s prison shows what it is like to live a life as a prisoner as well as a prison guard. There are over 1100 prisoners at this women’s prison. The female inmates are in this prison for various offenses ranging from robbery to murder. It seems like many of the women who are in prison for murder are women who killed their boyfriends or husbands in domestic violence cases.

In the beginning of the documentary, a few officers talk about their job at the prison. One man guard talks about how he has to be there to maintain security and not to make friends with the prisoners. He has to be accompanied by another woman when he takes women back to their cells so that he cannot take advantage of the prisoners or be accused of taking advantage of them. One woman officer talks about how she will listen to the inmates because sometimes that is all they want but other times she has to write them up and enforce her authority. Some of the women can be violent towards each other or the officers but these officers are trained to handle these situations. The officers feel happy when they know that a prisoner is released and that they end up doing well. One officers says that she knows some people probably will not end up coming back, while others probably will. The warden of this prison says that people have to understand that to get respect you have to give respect, so she trains the guards to treat the prisoners so that they can maintain their human values but that they need to know they have a responsibility to serve time for the crimes they have committed. In the segregation unit, women are locked in 8x8 cells for 23 hours a day and are seen by mental health staff. In this unit the officers sometimes have to take everything out of the prisoners cell so that they do not try to kill themselves. In this area of the prison, many of the prisoners are violent and some assaults are experience by the guards. When these inmates do get to go outside, they use the time to communicate with others and exercise. Maximum security inmates are only allowed to take two 15 minute showers, twice a week. The inmates can read or draw. One inmate was not even allowed to see her child while she was dying in the hospital.

Another interesting aspect of the show is the relationships that the prisons develop while inside. Many of the prisoners engage in lesbian relationships, either because it is their sexual preference or because it makes it easier for them to survive inside. One girl talks about how she would get into relationships with women with the sole purpose of hustling them. Now she is in a new relationship and she does not do that anymore. Many women seek emotional support and comfort from the relationships they establish inside. Having a girlfriend makes them feel like they are cared for. One relationship shows a lesbian couple that was separated when one of the women had to go into isolation for a fight. It proved to be very difficult for these two to be away from each other for so long as they were not allowed to see or speak to each other. One of the women in this relationship was going to get out in 8 months and told NBC that she would likely come back because she did not want to be away from her girlfriend and would not be able to survive without her. One lesbian groups describes how they will create distractions so that a couple can have a few moments of intimacy with each other, since having sex in the prison is penalized.

The film also shows first time offenders getting booked. The process of fingerprinting, the strip search, etc. takes over six hours, and then the prisoners are escorted to the dorms. The dorms are crowded and hot. The prison offers various vocational training programs for the inmates such as cosmetology, making denchers, culinary arts, etc. and by doing this the women feel that they are able to take these learned skills and apply them to life when they are released.

Overall, I found it shocking that the maximum security prisoners are kept in such small cells for the majority of the day and it seemed wrong to me. But I guess if these prisoners are a problem to other prisoners than that is what must be done. Still, it seems that they should at least get to go outside for longer than an hour to exercise or simply see the light of day. It seems like it would be easy for anyone to go crazy if you had to spend that much time in a tiny cell by yourself. It also seems wrong that the women cannot be released if a loved one has died. I did think it was really amazing that the jail offers so many programs for the prisoners to learn skills that they can use on the outside after they are released. I think it is an extremely productive thing to have programs like that that boost the morale of the prisoners so they feel like they do not have to go back to committing crimes. One story I found particularly shocking was the one about the ex-prison guard who is now an inmate for killing her husband. She got life without parole because she killed him and tried to make it look like a suicide. The stories of the prisoners and the guards were all very exciting and informative to listen to.