4 | WHY PRISONS DON’T WORK

This piece (from the socialistworker.co.uk) is about the failure of prisons, from prisoners’ perspectives.

The problem with prisons is not just with reoffending rates (and the “revolving door”) but also with life inside prison, with what happens (or does not happen) when prisoners are released, and with the stigmatization that is involved in being an “ex-con”.  Unsurprisingly, the argument of the piece is based on Marxian thinking that crime and punishment are embedded in societal inequality which, while undoubtedly valid, is problematic, not least because it is a perspective which offers little in terms of immediate or accessible options for reducing crime. Nonetheless, it is an important read.

As the crisis in the prison system grows, Julie Sherry shows how prisons do nothing to prevent crime and dehumanise those who end up there.

More than 1,100 people in UK prisons committed suicide between 1996 and 2009. By 2010 there were around 35 incidents of prisoners self-harming every day—and this rate has continued to rise. These horrifying statistics expose the hollow lie that prisons are there to rehabilitate offenders. Prisons are filled with people from backgrounds of extreme poverty and often abuse. Incarceration institutionalises violence and strips people of any control over their lives. The Prison Reform Trust surveyed prisoners’ experience. “They treat you like shit, a piece of dirt,” said one prisoner. “My dad is not an MP, my mum’s not clever, I’m just a nobody and people can do what they like.” Others talked about the climate of fear inside. One said, “Someone got raped in the shower by eight lads and then two days later he killed himself and that scared me”. Incidents of sexual assault in prisons are believed to be drastically under reported. Many describe sexual violence as a dominant daily feature of prison life. One woman prisoner spoke of how she would often have to choose between the violence outside her cell, or face her depression alone. She said, “Staff just say, ‘go behind your door’ but you don’t always want to be on your own because that’s when you get down, and start self harming again”. Overwhelmingly, prisoners have low levels of education. Two thirds have numeracy skills below the level expected of an 11 year old, and half have a reading ability of this level. Some 48 percent of prisoners have a history of debt. A quarter of prisoners were in care as children, compared to 2 percent of the general population.

Read more.

3 | INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY – MUCH DONE, AND SO MUCH LEFT TO DO

On this International Women’s Day, Polly Toynbee explains how we are going backwards instead of forwards in our quest for equality. You can thank Dave and his mates for that.

Turn back the clocks and rewind history for International Women’s Day today. This marks the first era in living memory that British women’s freedoms have gone into reverse, as women pay the heaviest price for government policies.

Intentionally or not, a male breadwinner with a dependent woman carer at home is the model on which the cuts are crafted, removing the supports to independence and sending women home. “The most family-friendly government ever” – promised at election time – is in retreat.

It’s family-friendly, indeed. If, by family, you mean Papa out at work and Mama at home in the kitchen where she belongs:

Women do twice as much unpaid caring as men, so when the safety nets go, so does their independence. Of the 710,000 public employees cut, 65% are women. Since women progress higher up the ladder in the public sector, expect their overall professional status to fall.

Cameron calls for more women in the boardroom – only 14% now – but he opposes EU plans for quotas. If his government seems blind to women, it doesn’t help that he has appointed only 21 women out of 119 ministers. Women earn less, own less, have less secure jobs, with three times more men than women earning in the top 10%.

And not only are women far from high-earners, but the pay gap is set to widen as we lose more and more public sector jobs:

The pay gap has narrowed annually for a generation, though women still earn 15.5% less than men. But for the first time in decades that gap is set to widen as losing public sector jobs where pay is far more equal tips the balance. Lib Dem raising of the tax threshold does least for women, as many earn below tax levels, but lose multiples more in benefit and credits.

And our rights and resources are further eroded when cuts will mean that women cannot afford legal representation in divorce cases and intimate partner violence cases. At the same time, essential services for abused women are being cut:

Winning rights in divorce has taken women decades, but wives will be powerless when they lose legal aid. For custody of their children and sharing assets, they must defend themselves in court while husbands may afford lawyers. This week’s NAO report shows CMEC, the child support agency, fails to get child maintenance for more than half of mothers – yet it will now depend on women paying a 12% commission from their average £30 a week payments. The fathers’ rebellion against paying finally wins the day as the government tells families to “sort it out for themselves”.

Half the women suffering domestic violence will lose legal aid as qualifying rules tighten. Women’s refuges, severely cut, report turning away 230 women a day with nowhere to send them. Expect teenage pregnancies to rise after falling 24% since 1998: in recent years the teenage pregnancy strategy finally discovered what worked. But that’s wound up, with smaller funds dispersed unringfenced to councils.

[guardian]

But we’ve never had it so good, right? And feminism is redundant, right? WRONG! In a culture were rape “jokes” are encouraged, where I am still afraid to walk alone after dark, where misogynistic attitudes and behaviours are applauded, where there is a growing movement to remove my right to decide what I want and do not want for my own body, where succeeding in your career is still gender-dependent, where our government actively want to put me and every other woman back in the kitchen (and, if we’re lucky, on a reserve workforce), and where millions of women in the world still have no rights at all, on this International Women’s Day, remember what we have achieved, but know that there is so much left to do.

2 | SANDRA FLUKE SAYS LIMBAUGH’S “APOLOGY” DOESN’T CHANGE ANYTHING

Good! Limbaugh did to Fluke what many sexist and over-privileged men have done before him – he called a woman a slut in order to humiliate and silence her. Unlucky for him, it didn’t work.

Fluke argued in Congress last week that”that religiously affiliated institutions such as universities and hospitals should provide insurance plans that cover all costs for medicinal contraceptives.” (bbc) In response, Rush Limbaugh called Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” on his radio show.

“What does it say about the college co-ed Susan [sic] Fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex,” he said. “It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”

[bbc]

Dear God!

After being criticised for his remarks, he initially (and predictably) refused to back down and further remarked, “If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.”

Limbaugh has since apologised but Fluke has, rightly, rejected his “apology”.

The Georgetown law student who drew an apology from Rush Limbaugh this weekend after the conservative radio host called her a “slut” on his show said that his public apology wasn’t sufficient during an appearance on ABC’s “The View” today. “I don’t think that a statement like this issued, saying that his choice of words was not the best, changes anything, and especially when that statement is issued when he’s under significant pressure from his sponsors who have begun to pull their support,” said the 30-year-old student, Sandra Fluke.

[abcnews]

That his apology was about his choice of words, rather than the deeply misogynistic sentiments behind them, and came about because of the potential loss of sponsorship for his radio show, is evidence enough that he shows little remorse for his treatment of Fluke.

1 | IT’S NOT EASY BEING FEMINIST

My best friend sent me this. It’s me; this is actually me. I cannot listen to a piece of music, read a newspaper article, hear a news story, or watch a DVD or television programme without deconstructing and analysing it all with a feminist lens. Is it demonstrating (or even promoting) equality, is it utilising sexist “humour”, was it written from a “malestream” perspective, does it pass the Bechdel Test, do women get any screentime without men/ without talking about men, etc. etc.?

It makes relaxing difficult, if not impossible. Sometimes it makes going down the pub a gruelling exercise.

Everything is a potential problem (because, let’s face it, when was the last time a piece of media ticked all of your feminist boxes?) and you get to learn the formula. Hollywood films use tired stereotypes about the romance-craving, overly-emotional, child-like woman; British soap operas portray a bitter and jaded harpy with an eye-rolling husband; television advertisements make clear distinctions between female and male products and practices; billboard advertisements use female nudity as a way to sell their products; and the mainstream media feminise all that is undesirable and objectionable.

After a while you can’t help but see it everywhere, even when you’re not looking. Media and entertainment do not exist in a cultural vacuum, and every sexist portrayal that we see, read or hear perpetuates a sexist attitude and/or behaviour somewhere down the line. In portraying sexism, mass media actively promote it. So, we have to criticise and we have to call it out, and I’m certainly not going to stop now, even if it does make a Sunday afternoon in front of the telly box somewhat less enjoyable.