Instead of prisons: a handbook for abolitionists

Crimes of Violence, A Staff Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (Washington, DC., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969) Vol. II, p. 217. This study showed that 46 percent of rapists knew or were related to their victims.

11. See Mulvihill, et al, pp. 209 12. Also Susan Brownmiller, pp. 210 55, suggests that the incidence of Black on white rape may actually be up in the 1970's from the late 1950's due to increased racial hostility. Another possibility is the fact that Black women, especially those victimized by white men, are traditionally met with racist as well as sexist cruelties at the hands of police and the courts, and knowing this, they are extremely reluctant to report their victimizations to hospitals or police.

12. See Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York, Bantam, 1968) p. 267.

13. See Schwendinger and Schwendinger.

14. See "She Loves Rape," Off Our Backs, May 1975.

15. See Brownmiller, pp. 86 113.

16. See Metro's Rape Awareness Public Education Program, Miami, Florida, After the Rape: A Report Based on Responses from Victim of Sexual Assault, 1974, pp. 18 26.

17. Juliet Mitchell, Woman's Estate (New York, Vintage, 1971) p. 61.

18. See Evelyn Reed, Woman's Evolution (New York Pathfinder Press, 1975) pp. 411 32. Also Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1970) pp. 33 35. Also Brownmiller, pp. 281 82.

19. See Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (New York, Dutton, 1974) PP. 2990. Also Brownmiller, pp. 295 97, 444 46.

20. Paul H. Gebhard, et al, Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types (New York, Harper & Row, 1965) p. 196.

21. See Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston, Beacon, 1973) pp. 114 22, 193 94.

22. See Edward Schumacher, "Home Called More Violent Than Street," Washington Post, February 24, 1976: "No thoro national studies have been done... but according to accumulated scraps of data and a number of limited studies, the problem (violence within the home) is worse than crime on the streets.. .'We're talking about a couple of million wives getting beat up regularly and don't know what to do about it,' Gelles (researcher at the University of Rhode Island at the American Association for the Advancement of Science) said."

23. Murray A. Straus, Richard J. Gelles, and Suzanne K. Steinmetz, "Violence in the Family: An Assessment of Knowledge and Research Needs," American Association for the Advancement of Science, Boston, Massachusetts, February 23, 1976.

24. See Karen DeCrow, Sexist Justice (New York, Vintage, 1974) pp. 176 207.

25. See Susan Ozzanna, "The Battered Woman's Only Solution,'' Majority Report, February 7, 1976 and S. Harmony Ozzanna, "What's Red and Black and Harbors Women?" Majority Report, February 21, 1976. Also "Violence Against Women: Woman Battering" in Kirsten Grimsted and Susan Rennie, eds., The New Woman's Survival Sourcebook (New York, Knopf, 1976). Also Del Martin, The Battered Wives of America (San Francisco, Glide Publications, 1975).

26. See F.B.I., U.C.R. 1973.

27. "Police Victim Relationships in Sex Crimes Investigation," Police Chief, January 1970.

28. See Carol Bohmer, "Judicial Attitudes Toward Rape Victims," Judicature, February 1974. Also "The Least Punished Crime," National Affairs, December 18, 1972.

29. See Washington, D.C. Institute of Law & Social Research, 1974. Also D.C. City Council, "Report of the Public Safety Committee Task Force on Rape," 1973.

30. See "Corroborating Charges of Rape," Columbia Law Review, June 1967. Also "Corroboration Rules & Crimes Accompanying a Rape," University of Pennsylvania Law Review, January 1970.

31. Richard A. Hibey, "The Trial of a Rape Case: An Advocate's Analysis of Corroboration, Consent, and Character," The American Criminal Law Review, Vol. 11, 1973.

32. Connell and Wilson, pp. 144 63.

33. Connell and Wilson print the model statute in its entirety, pp. 164 69.

34. "Rape Victim Wins," Danbury, Connecticut News Times, February 3, 1976.

35. See Nancy Gager and Cathleen Schurr, Sexual Assault: Confronting Rape in America (New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1976) pp. 190 96.

36. F.B.I. U.C.R., 1973.

37. Marvin E. Wolfgang and Anthony Amsterdam, "The Death Penalty," New York Times Magazine, October 28, 1973.

38. "Death Row Census," American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Memorandum, March 29, 1976.

39. See U.S. Department of Justice, "Capital Punishment," National Prisoner Statistics Bulletin Number 46, August 1971.

40. See Carl Weiss and David James Friar, "Terror in the Prisons: A Report," Fortune News, April 1974. Also William Stanley Cape, "Prison Sex: Absence of Choice," Fortune News, April 1974.

41. See Yolanda Bako, N.O.W. Rape Prevention Committee, "Consciousness Raising Topics on How the Fear of Rape Constricts Our Lives," mimeograph sheet. (Available from N.O.W. New York City Chapter. 47 East Nineteenth Street, New York, New York 10003.)

42. For a detailed account of the development of the anti rape movement, see Gager and Schurr, pp. 257 75. Also June Bundy Csida and Joseph Csida, Rape, How to Avoid It and What to Do about It if You Can't (Chatsworth, California, Books for Better Living, 1974) pp.133 66.

43. See Gager and Schurr, pp. 271 72.

44. Material in this section based on Mary Ann Largen, et al., "How to Start A Rape Crisis Center," in Marcia J. Walker, ed., Rape: Research, Action, Prevention, Proceedings of the Sixth Alabama Symposium on Justice and the Behavioral Sciences (University of Alabama, Center for Correctional Psychology, May 1975) Report No. 29, pp. 127 31. Also Rape Center Women, "How to Start a Rape Crisis Center," P.O. Box 21005, Kalorama Street Station, Washington, D.C., August 1972. Also Women's Crisis Center, "How to Organize a Women's Crisis Service Center," 306 North Division Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48108.

45. Prepared by the National Crime Panel of the National Criminal Justice Information Statistics Service, May 1975. Available from U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, National Criminal Justice Reference Service, Washington, D.C. 20530

46. Material on BAWAR is from Grinsted and Rennie, p. 148; Gager and Schurr, p. 264; Csida and Csida, pp. 149 50; and telephone interview with staffperson Robin Wells, May 17, 1976. BAWAR publications, available from P.O. Box 240, Berkeley, California 94701 (phone 415 845 RAPE), include: "Medical Protocol for Emergency Room Treatment of Rape Victims," "Sisters: If you Sometimes Hitchhike, Please Read This," "Organize Your Neighborhood and Prevent Crime," "Hands Off: Rape Prevention and Survival."

47. Gager and Schurr, p. 264.

48. Grimsted and Rennie, p. 147.

49. "Rape Reparations," Off Our Backs, April 1976 (Reprinted from Pandora).

50. From "National News Notes Tennessee," Feminist Alliance against Rape Newsletter, September/October 1974.

51. From "March on Safety," Majority Report, November 29 December 13, 1975.

52. Ibid. Also Kathleen Hendrix, "Women Take the Offensive on Rapists," Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1974. Also "Know Your Local Rapist," Majority Report, regular column.

53. Joan Goldman, "Boys on the Street Be Warned," Majority Report, July 20, 1975. Also "Campaign Against Street Harassment To Whom It May Concern" mimeograph sheet. Available from Women's Center, 243 West 20th Street, New York, New York 10011.

54. Kathy Barry, Debbie Frederick, et al., Stop Rape, pamphlet, Detroit Women Against Rape, 1971, pp. 43 44.

55. From telephone interview with Andrea Ignatoff of ZAP Tactics, May 17, 1976.

56. See Daly, pp. 169 70. Also Bob Lamm, "The Men's Movement Hype," Changing Men, newsletter of the Portland, Oregon Men's Resource Center, December 1975, pp. 16 19; Also Redstockings, ''Feminist Revolution,'' 1975, P.O. Box 413, New Paltz, New York 12561; Also Los Angeles Men's Collective, "Statement of the Los Angeles Men's Collective," Changing Men, March 1976, pp. 29 30.

57. See Alan J. Davis, "Sexual Assaults in the Philadelphia Prison System," Gagnon and Simons, eds., The Sexual Scene (Chicago, Transaction/Aldine, 1970) pp. 107 24.

58. See "Rapists As Victims?" NEPA News, March 1975. Also David Rothenberg, "Punishment + Punishment = Crime," Fortune, December 1974. Also H. Jack Griswold, Mike Misenheimer, et al., An Eye for an Eye, pp. 142 43.

59. U.S. Department of Justice, National Prisoner Statistics: Prisoners Released from State and Federal Institutions, 1960, Figure B.

60. See Gager and Schurr, pp. 235 36.

61. From PREAP interview, June 6, 1975, with Dr. Joanne Sterling, Associate Director of the Bernalillo County Mental Health Center and Director of Positive Approaches to Sex Offenders at that time.

62. From telephone interview with Wally Crowe, coordinator Sex Offender Treatment, Alternative House, Inc., April 27, 1976.

63. Ibid.

64. Information on the origins and goals of PAR is drawn from "General Information Pamphlet,'' Prisoners Against Rape, Inc., P.O. Box 25, Lorton, Virginia, 22079. Also Larry Cannon and William Fuller, "Prisoners Against Rape," Feminist Alliance against Rape Newsletter, P.O. Box 20133, Washington, D.C. 20009, September/October 1974.

65. See Gager and Schurr, pp. 253 54.

66. See "The Experimental Phase of the BEAD Program for Sex Offenders at the Minnesota Security Hospital, 1974-1975," mimeograph paper available from BEAD, MSH, St. Peter, Minnesota 56082.

67. Material in this section based on Geraldine Boozer, "Offender Treatment: Programming Ideas," in Walker, pp. 131 32.

68. Vincent De Francis, Protecting the Child Victims of Sex Crimes Committed by Adults (American Humane Association, P.O. Box 1226, Denver, Colorado, 1969) p. 37.

69. Ibid., p. 2.

70. See Gager and Schurr, p. 30.

71. Ibid.

72. De Francis, p. 1.

73. See Gager and Schurr, pp. 29 57.

74. The material in this section is excerpted from Dc Francis.

75. See Reed, pp. 433 34, 447 64.

76. See National Council on Crime and Delinquency, "Some Facts on Juvenile Crime." Harper's Weekly, May 9, 1975: Òin 1973... more than nine percent of rape arrests were youngsters under 16 years of age."

77. See footnote 28.

78. See Richard S. Johnson, "The Child Beaters: Sick, but Curable," The National Observer, March 24, 1973.

79. See Feminists on Children's Media, ''Little Miss Muffet Fights Back," KNOW, Inc., P.O. Box 86031, Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania 15221, 1974. Also Marcia Federbush, "An Action Proposal to Eliminate Sex Discrimination (... in Schools)," KNOW, Inc., 1974: a practical. step by step handbook.

80. See Stanlee Phelps and Nancy Austin, The Assertive Woman (Fredericksburg, Virginia, Impact, Book Crafters, 1975).

81. See Alyce McAdam, "Self Defense for Children," mimeograph paper, available from Alyce McAdam, 204 SE. 4th Ave., Gainesville, Florida 32601.

82. Gager and Schurr, pp. 61 62.

83. See Charlayne Hunter, "Four Seized in Smut Involving Children," New York Times, September 20, 1975.

84. See Scott Christianson, "The War Model in Criminal Justice No Substitue for Victory," Criminal Justice and Behavior, 1, No. 3, September 1974, pp. 247 77.

85. Leslie T. Wilkins, "Directions for Corrections," from an address to the American Philosophical Society, November. 1973, quoted in Christianson, p. 266.

86. William Ryan, Blaming the Victim, pp. 197 98.

87. Murray A. Straus, "Sexual Inequality, Cultural Norms, and Wife Beating," paper prepared for International Institute on Victimology," Bellagio, Italy, July 1 12, 1975, p. 1: "I have documented the available knowledge which suggests, among other things... that if one is truly concerned with the level of violence in America, the place to look is in the home rather than on the streets.''

88. Reprinted in Synopsis of Workshop "Media Effect on Crime," October 1974. Conference on Crime and the Minority Community Commission on Racial Justice, United Church of Christ.

89. U.S. Department of Justice, Prosecution of Economic Crime, LEAA, National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, 1975, p. 4.

90. About 70 percent of all willful killings, nearly two thirds of all aggravated assaults, and a high percentage of forcible rapes are committed by family members, friends or other persons previously know to their victims. See President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: Crime and Its Impact An Assessment (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office) especially Chapters, 2, 5 and 6.

91. Ibid.

92. Ryan, p. 198.

93. Maggi Scarf, "The Anatomy of Fear," New York Times, June 16, 1974, p. 10.

94. Crime and the Black Community, United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, Vol. 2, No. 1, Summer 1975. Material in this section abstracted from this report and the "Synopsis of Community Anti Crime Workshop," from the Conference on Crime and the Minority Community, October 1974.

95. Material in this section is based on literature published by CLASP, and by the Block Association of West Philadelphia, 632 South 48th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19143 (phone 215 GR4 3008). Also on interviews with David Sherman. CLASP staff person, June 8. 1976 and Margaret Bowman, block association participant. July 2, 1976.

Instead of Prisons Table of Contents > Chapter 9

9. EMPOWERMENT

One of the few consistent trends over the past decades has been a slow, very painful, but steady increase in the rights of people formerly excluded from any decision making arena. Black people, women, Chicanos, industrial workers, farm workers, gay people; all have far to go before equality of opportunity and treatment is a reality, but all have come very far from where they were 40 years ago. The struggle is no less intense now; the outcome in any single situation is problematic, but overall the extension of power to more and more people cannot be stopped.

 The Outlaw, January/ February 1976, P. 2

Empowering the community

Empowerment is more than a belief; it is a concept that governs the way we interact with people. It is also a method one which reflects the values of human dignity, respect for growth of consciousness and the integrity of relationships. Empowerment means that people and communities have the ability to define and deal with their own problems. Successful self management requires access to and control of proper resources, but lack of access in no way reduces the clarity with which affected people perceive their own problems and needs. Empowerment is essentially a political process redistributing power among the heretofore powerless. Empowerment assumptions undergird and effect the quality of programs abolitionists support.

The empowerment models we advocate in this handbook are not to be confused with "community corrections" referred to by systems people. As abolitionists we essentially identify as community alternatives, those programs created by affected people: ex , community workers, drug addicts, alcoholics, rape victims, street crime victims and others. These are programs and alternatives that evolve directly from experience and need and are controlled by participants.

Contrast this with the systems' definition of "community corrections." This term is applied to a wide variety of "correctional" activities for accused or convicted adults or juveniles, administered outside the jail, reformatory or prison. It includes traditional probation and parole, halfway houses, group homes, pretrial release and sometimes explicitly rehabilitative programs.[1] A common ingredient in all these programs is that decision making power remains in the grip of the system.

Understandably, this concept of community "corrections" as an alternative to mass institutions appeals to a broad spectrum of prison changers. [2] Enlightened systems managers, professionals, exprisoners and abolitionists alike are united in the belief that a move from massive institutions toward the community is desirable:

• 
  Most judges prefer sending younger lawbreakers to alternative programs to escape the damaging effects of prison.
  
• 
  Some administrators use community "corrections" to provide a progressive facade which quiets reformist critics, even tho community centers accommodate only a tiny fraction of the state's prison population.[3]
  
• 
  Most prisoners regard any change that gets them outside prison walls as an improvement. Prison changers thus support community alternatives, even tho they are controlled by the system.
  

However compelling the move away from institutional punishment to community punishment, words of caution seep thru:

As an ex offender I will guarantee you that I will select prison over your community treatment. And the fact that you can give me evidence that the offenders constantly seek these doesn't mean anything to me, because we're all familiar with the bargain with the devil kind of phenomenon in human history. Human beings are consistently willing to make bad bargains for immediate gain, and regret it later. And the convicts are included in this: You offer them a chance to avoid incarceration, and they will take the bad bargain of the community treatment. And many of them regret it.

 John Irwin, "Rehabilitation Versus Justice," Changing Correctional Systems, First Alabama Symposium on Justice and the Behavioral Sciences, University of Alabama, 1973, P. 64

A word of caution. The development of these alternatives, designed to divert offenders from institutions by means ofnbsp; community alternatives, should not be controlled by those presently in command of conventional correctional systems. Decisive participation by the private sector is indispensible. True alternatives are competing alternatives: the correctional establishment is poorly prepared, both by tradition and ideology to nurture its own replacement. The surest way to defeat such a program would be to place it under the control of those who have been unable either to acknowledge or to correct their own fundamental errors .... The opposition of those presently in charge can be counted upon. That opposition must be resisted and overcome. A history of failure confers no credential for determining the future. The past can only reproduce itself: it cannot create something new.

  Richard Korn, criminologist in University of San Francisco Law Review, October 1971, pp. 71 72

Paradoxically, abolitionists who support moving away from systems' control also support efforts to remove prisoners from closed, security oriented institutions to the less restrictive setting of the community as quickly as possible. Some systems-controlled programs can be viewed as first steps along the way from cage to street. Others might be perceived as interim strategies in our work toward more sweeping changes. At the least, systems alternatives provide an opportunity to educate the public about the concepts of decarceration and excarceration, and most importantly, in many instances they bring desired relief to the caged. Prison changers will need to evaluate their local situations and decide where to place their energies.