Jill McCorkel spent several years interviewing dozens of women incarcerated in East Coast prisons who, in response to the 1980s’ War on Drugs, are part of a vastly growing number imprisoned females.
She listened to the stories of these 74 woman whose lives were greatly changed as tougher drug policies pulled them into prison, and for-profit rehab organizations, hired by the prisons, convinced them they were addicts and criminals even though many had no prior convictions or weren’t even users.
One woman, a frail 60-something grandmother, was incarcerated for trafficking. Her grandson, who lived with her, paid part of her mortgage with money made from selling small amounts of marijuana to friends. “The law said she must have known where the money came from,” McCorkel said. Twenty years ago she would not have been sent to prison.
Judges had been hesitant to send women to prison.”
McCorkel, who earned her doctoral degree in sociology at the University of Delaware, brings her insight to the College’s Gibble Auditorium at Elizabethtown College at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21, as part of the MLK celebration week. The associate professor of sociology and criminology at Villanova University presents “From Good Girls to ‘Real’ Criminals: Dissecting the Market Logic and Racial Politics of Incarcerating Women.” The event is free and open to the public.
McCorkel’s talk centers on a portion of her 2013 book Breaking Women: Gender, Race, and the New Politics of Imprisonment, which takes an in-depth look at what has happened at women’s prisons over the past 25 years. “What accounts for the enormous increase in women’s incarceration rate?” McCorkel asked rhetorically in a phone interview.
In the mid1990s prison populations moved from primarily white for females to primarily black. Their median age is late 20s. So, in addition to changes in laws, there also have been shifting views on race and racial stereotypes and, in general, in putting women behind bars. “Judges had been hesitant to send women to prison,” McCorkel said of pre-1990s.
The professor’s interviews took place over a several-year period. All were interviewed the first time in prison; some later interviews took place after they were released and attempting to put their lives back in order.
One woman, a single mother with two children and a decent job at auto parts company, took over a small part of her brother’s drug business when he was sent to prison. The money helped pay bills.
“She was horrified (when she was arrested),” said McCorkel. Who would take care of her children? What would they think of her?
So, even though she was not a drug user, she took part in the treatment program to reduce her sentence. “She embraced the philosophy,” McCorkel said. “She met with senators and judges. She was one everyone thought would do OK” after release. But a year later, when scheduling a follow up interview, the woman wouldn’t allow McCorkel to come to her apartment. Instead, they met at a dirty playground with drug paraphernalia and litter everywhere.
“She is embarrassed by her situation,” McCorkel said.
“She couldn’t’ get her job back because she now has a felony – most drug charges carry a felony – so she is working three jobs — two in fast food, one at a hotel that charges by the hour. She is spending more and more time away from her children so she can support them in a legitimate job.”
‘What’s the point,’ the woman remarked of her seemingly dead-end situation.
“The drug treatment programs force women to accept a view of themselves as inherently damaged, aberrant addicts in order to secure an earlier release,” noted promotional material for Breaking Women. “These programs work to enforce stereotypes of deviancy that ultimately humiliate and degrade the women.”
The rehab, McCorkel said, tends to group all of the women together as drug offenders. “Trouble makers who are potentially going to commit crimes again,” said McCorkel, noting that the women truly are “wayward girls, good girls who were victims of situations.”
Case in point: Another woman interviewed by the author was convicted when law enforcement agents found cocaine in the glove compartment after a car accident. The drugs belonged to her boyfriend but, because he had prior violations and she had a clean record, she took the fall for the drugs.
“She had no priors,” McCorkel said. “She took one for the team.” Twenty years ago it would have been a slap on the wrist but, with the present mindset, she was behind bars.
In addition to McCorkel’s research of the social and political consequences of mass incarceration in the United States — focusing primarily on how law and systems of punishment perpetuate race, class and gender-based inequities – she also is developing Villanova’s undergraduate degree program at SCI – Graterford, the largest maximum security prison in Pennsylvania, where she also teaches undergraduate courses and runs a monthly seminar series that offers faculty members from area universities the opportunity to discuss their research with prisoners enrolled in the undergraduate program.
McCorkel serves as a consultant on wrongful conviction cases and commutation and parole petitions.