Victoria Law's Blog

Today is the day that Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms officially comes out!

(Yes, I know that some of you preordered and already got your copies, but this is the Official Book Release Day.)

The ongoing pandemic prevents us from celebrating at an in-person book launch, so I wanted to publicly raise a glass (well, a coffee mug) to my amazing co-author Maya Schenwar.

Once again, I'm challenging myself to read 50 books by women of color this year.

This time, instead of writing one long list of all the books at the end of the year, I'll be writing about them periodically as the year progresses for Rewire News.

You can read about some of my first 14 books here.

I'm always open to recommendations for other women of color authors. Let me know who I should be reading next.

For the past two years, I set myself a goal of reading 50 books by people of color. I decided on the challenge after listening to a podcast with speculative fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson, who talked about how books by people of color tend to be overlooked by publishers and readers alike. If you don't seek out new voices, it's easy to fall into reading books primarily, if not solely, by white authors. The challenge has introduced me to new authors, some of whom I’d never read but are widely known and some whose first novels debuted this year (Zen Cho—when can I read your next novel?).

By July, I had met my challenge. Then I looked at my reading list and frowned. Of those 50 books, only 22 were by women. (This is in large part because I discovered the prodigious Walter Mosley and tore through many of his books). So I set myself a new challenge—to read 50 books by women of color before the year’s end.

Two weeks before 2015 comes to a close, I’ve met my challenge. So if you’re looking for books to read, give, or both over the holidays, don’t forget that women of color write books—and these books are often fantastic (and frequently overlooked).

My reading list is here:
https://bitchmedia.org/article/i-read...

I've written a short listicle and two more in-depth articles on pregnancy and parenting in women's prisons to coincide with the release of Orange is the New Black.

If you want the in-a-nutshell version, check out my listicle on Bitchmedia:
Before You Binge Watch Orange is the New Black, Here Are 5 Facts to Know About Pregnancy in Prison.

For a more in-depth look at two of the (many) challenges to having a healthy pregnancy behind bars (and a sneak peek of some of the investigative reporting I've been doing over the past 6 months), check out:

How Real is Orange is the New Black's Take on Prison Pregnancy? for In These Times.

And because reproductive justice isn't only about pregnancy and babies that are just born and because currently and formerly incarcerated mothers do fight for their rights and organize to fight devastating policies:

Dilemma Faced in 'Orange is the New Black' All Too Real for Mothers Behind Bars, RH Reality Check.

Have you been wanting to get your own copy of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women or Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities? Want to buy one for a friend?

This month (well, until April 9th), you can do so at 40% off if you order directly from my publisher. Go here for more details:

http://t.co/dZkZEDX61l

I'm pleased to be part of an on-line conversation with fantastic women of color like Veronica Bayetti Flores, Tasasha Henderson, Andrea Ritchie, Harmony Rodriguez and Jamia Wilson (whose cousin was Joan Little!) about police violence and women of color.

My contribution is "Why Aren't We More Outraged When Police Kill Black Women?"

My piece, as well as the other pieces in the conversation are short but illuminating, so I definitely encourage you to read the entire series. Forward it to your friends (and people who are not necessarily your friends). Have conversations.

Then make sure to challenge the culture that permits this violence to keep happening.

This past Thursday, prison policy and advocacy organization the Correctional Association of New York released Reproductive Injustice: The State of Reproductive Health Care for Women in New York State Prisons . The report is a culmination of its five-year study and, not surprisingly, details horrifying experiences for women trying to access prenatal or other reproductive health care. I wrote about two of the issues the report identified:

Despite its 2009 law prohibiting the shackling of women during labor, delivery and postpartum recovery, the Correctional Association found that prisons routinely violate that law. Maria, for instance, was placed in handcuffs and ankle cuffs when being taken to the hospital for a c-section. Maria told the officers that they were violating the law, but was cuffed nonetheless. She gave birth with one hand cuffed to the side of the hospital bed. She held her daughter for the first time while handcuffed to the bed. I wrote about Maria's and others' experience with shackling during childbirth for The Guardian.

Solitary confinement has severe repercussions both for pregnant people and for those who need to access medical care. In New York, approximately 1,600 people are placed in solitary in women's prisons each year. (Keep in mind that New York incarcerates approximately 4000 women each year.) I interviewed two women about their experiences trying to access prenatal and reproductive health care while locked in the SHU for Solitary Watch.

You can read the entire report here.

I've been covering Marissa Alexander's case on and off since her sentencing in 2012. Below are my latest two, one just before her final sentencing hearing this past Tuesday and one written in the hours that followed her release.

Two hundred years ago, quilts were an integral part of the Underground Railroad. Abolitionists sewed patterns into the squares of their quilts. They then hung the quilts in their yards, ostensibly to air them out. Runaway slaves could use the squares to identify friendly people, possible guides, preparations and directions towards freedom.

This Tuesday, January 27, quilt squares will once again serve as a beacon towards freedom. In Jacksonville, Fla., the lawn outside the Duval County Courthouse will be blanketed with quilt squares. The reason: to bring attention to and protest the continued prosecution of Marissa Alexander, a black woman, mother of three and domestic violence survivor. Collected by the Monument Quilt, an ongoing project that crowd-sources stories of domestic and sexual violence, each of the 350 four-foot by four-foot squares contains a message about domestic violence or sexual assault. By sharing stories of domestic and sexual violence, the quilt also transforms the prosecution’s narrative that Alexander was the aggressor and, instead, examines her case in the context of a culture where domestic violence and sexual assault are pervasive and often condoned.

Read the entire article at
Changing the Culture of Domestic Violence One Quilt Square at a Time, Waging NonViolence, January 26, 2015.

and in the hours that followed Alexander's sentencing and release, I wrote another piece for The Nation:

On Tuesday, January 27, 2015, Marissa Alexander walked out of jail, but not as a free woman. At yesterday's hearing, the judge sentenced her to two years of house arrest with an ankle monitor. The prosecutor's office attempted to argue that Alexander should serve an additional two years of probation after her house arrest ended but were unsuccessful. Their continued attempts to punish Alexander for defending herself are a stark illustration of the ways in which domestic violence survivors are criminalized and prosecuted...

For years, anti-violence activists of color, along with organizations such as Beth Richie and INCITE! Women, Gender Non-Conforming, and Trans people of Color Against Violence, have noted that, by criminalizing survivors, the legal system replays, in institutional form, the domestic violence these women suffered. "Every time the state shames, blames, and punishes victims of domestic and sexual violence, it legitimizes that violence," members of the Free Marissa Now campaign tweeted hours before the sentencing. While Alexander's case has often been discussed as an example of the racial bias of the legal system, the intersection of her race and gender cannot be overemphasized.

When domestic violence is discussed, the "perfect victim" is usually portrayed as middle-class and white; she is also almost always submissive, loving and, most important, non-violent. So when she defends herself (or her children), a woman defies ingrained expectations of what a "perfect victim" should be and, for police, prosecutors, judges and juries, relinquishes any consideration of the circumstances of her action. In the case of a woman of color, who is already less likely to be deemed worthy of legal protection, the situation becomes even more tangled: by defending herself, she negates any claim she may have had to being the victim and gets framed as the aggressor.

Read the entire piece at Why is Marissa Alexander Still Being Punished for Fighting Back?, The Nation, January 28, 2015.

Just in time for the start of 2015, my newest piece--on domestic violence survivors in prison--is up on Al-Jazeera America. Here's an excerpt:

NEW YORK — Valerie Seeley has been behind bars since 2003. But her troubles started much earlier, in 1995, when she first met Oliver Williams and his 10-year-old daughter while visiting a friend in Brooklyn. “I thought it was a really cool thing that he had his child with him all the time,” she says in a conference room at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, New York state’s maximum-security prison for women.

Attracted to Williams, who seemed like a responsible, caring father, she began dating him and soon moved in with the pair. But Williams quickly changed — drinking heavily, passing out in the street, using drugs, accusing her of sleeping with other men, “all kinds of crazy things,” Seeley recalls. And then the violence began. The first time he hit her, she told him, “Don’t ever put your hands on me again.” But he did — again and again...

Survivors of abuse and trauma are incredibly common in prisons across the country. The U.S. Department of Justice found that more than half of women in jails and prisons were abused prior to incarceration. According to the New York state Department of Correctional and Community Services, 67 percent of women sent to prison for killing someone close to them had been abused by that person. A full 90 percent of prisoners at Bedford Hills have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetimes.

“That we continue to punish survivors in this way, with as much as we’ve learned about domestic violence over the years, truly shocks the conscience,” says Tamar Kraft-Stolar, director of the Women in Prison Project of the Correctional Association of New York, an advocacy organization that monitors New York state prisons. “Every time we visit a prison, we meet women who have been locked up for decades because they protected themselves. It’s a devastating example of the overuse of incarceration and it needs to end.”

The Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act was introduced in 2011 to address these concerns and is now in the state legislature’s codes committee, which votes on any bill that would increase or decrease penalties. If the codes committee approves the bill, it is sent to the entire legislature for a vote. Sponsored by Assembly member Jeffrion Aubry and Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, the act would allow incarcerated abuse survivors to apply for resentencing if their crimes were directly related to abuse. Not only would survivors like Seeley, who harmed or killed their abusers, be eligible, but so would survivors who were coerced into crimes, such as robbery or burglary, by abusive partners. During the past decade, California has passed a series of similar laws, while a narrower bill is making its way through the New Jersey Legislature.

You can read the entire article here: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles...

I didn't intend my end-of-the-year writing to focus so much on abuse survivors behind bars, but it did. Here's a quick round-up of what I've recently written:

It's Time to Bring Domestic Violence Survivors Like Barbara Sheehan Home from Prison, The Nation, December 24, 2014.

Why is California Keeping Kelly Savage in Prison for a Crime She Didn't Commit?, Truthout, November 29, 2014.

Despite Enduring a Lifetime of Violence, Kelly Savage Emerges as an In-Prison Activist, Waging NonViolence, December 19, 2014.