meant. It never fails to surprise me when we come across women who are as cruel, as violent, as their male counterparts. By and large, women’s prisons are less horrific places than men’s, exploitation movies like
Slammer Girls
and
Caged Heat
notwithstanding. There is violence, sure, even sexual violence, but most often it comes at the hands of the guards. The misery of incarceration for women is not usually about fear of their fellow prisoners. The misery comes from terrible living conditions, separation from children and family, woefully inadequate medical care, and mistreatment by those in power.
Our clients at the federal defender’s office were overwhelmingly male. When, every once in a while,I represented a woman, it was most often someone who had been lured into the criminal enterprise through a boyfriend or husband. The worst crime committed by most of the women I represented was having bad taste in men. There were, of course, violent women, although generally I didn’t see them in my practice. As a federal public defender, my caseload consisted of drug cases, bank robberies, the odd white-collar crime. I did not, by and large, defend individuals accused of crimes like assault or murder, except in the context of a drug transaction, or if the crime occurred on federal property. Still, even in state court, women who stood accused of violent crime most often had as their victims abusive husbands or lovers.
The woman who killed Sandra Lorgeree, whether she’d committed the murder out of racist rage, personal animosity, or for financial gain, was either an unusual and frightening creature or so under the thumb of the men of the Brand that they’d turned her into one.
It helped that Al and I were not busy with other work, but I think that even if our office had been groaning under the weight of cases, we both would still have devoted our time to Sandra and her baby.Neither of us could stomach the idea of stopping, of giving up. It would have meant giving in to what had befallen Sandra, and we were both too stubborn to do that. We don’t have very much in common, my partner and I, but one thing we share is a mule-headed stubbornness. This quality is one that we admire tremendously in each other. We’re lucky in this, because everyone else in our lives finds it excessively irritating.
“I’ll go to Pleasanton with you,” Al said.
“Just give me a couple of days to stockpile enough breast-milk to see Sadie through another day without me.”
Poor Sadie. There is a photo album chronicling every month of Ruby’s first year. Even Isaac had managed to fill three albums by his first birthday, and at least half a dozen of the pictures in there were of him alone, without his sister. Other than the official hospital photograph marking Sadie’s birth, and a few shots of her older siblings holding her in their laps, Sadie’s first months had gone by entirely unremarked upon—at least on photo stock. I had made her no baby book, and had I managed to motivate myself to do so, instead of the requisite notations of the first smile, first tooth, and lock of hairfrom the first trim, it would have been far more honest to make an inventory of the indignities she suffered that her siblings never had. Being separated from her mother at the age of four months, from dawn until dusk twice in a single week, probably wouldn’t have ended up high on the list.
Twelve
A L and I did not premeditate our masquerade. Our intention when we left John Wayne Airport in Orange County (the only airport Al consents to fly out of—he says because it’s smaller and better managed; I think it’s because he fancies himself a lot like the Duke) was to do a simple interview. Our plans remained the same when we landed in Oakland, when we squeezed ourselves into the miniature doors of the Monopoly playing piece the rental car agency insisted on referring to as a “car,” and all the way along the freeway winding through the gray-green hills to
Slammer Girls
and
Caged Heat
notwithstanding. There is violence, sure, even sexual violence, but most often it comes at the hands of the guards. The misery of incarceration for women is not usually about fear of their fellow prisoners. The misery comes from terrible living conditions, separation from children and family, woefully inadequate medical care, and mistreatment by those in power.
Our clients at the federal defender’s office were overwhelmingly male. When, every once in a while,I represented a woman, it was most often someone who had been lured into the criminal enterprise through a boyfriend or husband. The worst crime committed by most of the women I represented was having bad taste in men. There were, of course, violent women, although generally I didn’t see them in my practice. As a federal public defender, my caseload consisted of drug cases, bank robberies, the odd white-collar crime. I did not, by and large, defend individuals accused of crimes like assault or murder, except in the context of a drug transaction, or if the crime occurred on federal property. Still, even in state court, women who stood accused of violent crime most often had as their victims abusive husbands or lovers.
The woman who killed Sandra Lorgeree, whether she’d committed the murder out of racist rage, personal animosity, or for financial gain, was either an unusual and frightening creature or so under the thumb of the men of the Brand that they’d turned her into one.
It helped that Al and I were not busy with other work, but I think that even if our office had been groaning under the weight of cases, we both would still have devoted our time to Sandra and her baby.Neither of us could stomach the idea of stopping, of giving up. It would have meant giving in to what had befallen Sandra, and we were both too stubborn to do that. We don’t have very much in common, my partner and I, but one thing we share is a mule-headed stubbornness. This quality is one that we admire tremendously in each other. We’re lucky in this, because everyone else in our lives finds it excessively irritating.
“I’ll go to Pleasanton with you,” Al said.
“Just give me a couple of days to stockpile enough breast-milk to see Sadie through another day without me.”
Poor Sadie. There is a photo album chronicling every month of Ruby’s first year. Even Isaac had managed to fill three albums by his first birthday, and at least half a dozen of the pictures in there were of him alone, without his sister. Other than the official hospital photograph marking Sadie’s birth, and a few shots of her older siblings holding her in their laps, Sadie’s first months had gone by entirely unremarked upon—at least on photo stock. I had made her no baby book, and had I managed to motivate myself to do so, instead of the requisite notations of the first smile, first tooth, and lock of hairfrom the first trim, it would have been far more honest to make an inventory of the indignities she suffered that her siblings never had. Being separated from her mother at the age of four months, from dawn until dusk twice in a single week, probably wouldn’t have ended up high on the list.
Twelve
A L and I did not premeditate our masquerade. Our intention when we left John Wayne Airport in Orange County (the only airport Al consents to fly out of—he says because it’s smaller and better managed; I think it’s because he fancies himself a lot like the Duke) was to do a simple interview. Our plans remained the same when we landed in Oakland, when we squeezed ourselves into the miniature doors of the Monopoly playing piece the rental car agency insisted on referring to as a “car,” and all the way along the freeway winding through the gray-green hills to
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