Page seven The Other Press feature Prison leaves deep scars | “March 19, 1981 oy You can never erase a prison experience. No one can ever give back freedom to replace the dehumanizing days, months, years spent behind bars - the mindless daily schedule, pent-up rage, total lack of privacy, sneering provocations from ‘leering guards. and petty punishments used to silence “*troublemakers.’’ by Heather Conn for CUP Brutality and power-trip- ping mind games are bitter points of prison life as remembered by four women ex-cons in Vancouver. ‘Now enrolled in a pre-employ- ment program at the reha- bilitative Elizabeth Fry So- ciety, the women recall vi- vidly their cell-bound past. ‘“‘The whole system is designed to make you feel like a piece of shit,’’ says Bev, not her real name, who served time after being busted with 28 caps of heroin. ‘‘They (prison au- thorities) expect you to be happy, to carry on a normal routine as if you were on the outside. People on the outside get grumpy and tired and bitchy..:but you can’t in jail. “‘They play mind games. They fuck with your head. So they put you under more pressure and maybe you'll mess up and.they can send you off to Oakalla or Kings- ton (penitentiary) or what- ever.”’ Male guards are sup- posed to knock before enter- ing a woman’s cell says Bev; but at the mimimum security Lynda Williams community correctional ins- titute in Vancouver they always walk in unannoun- ced, often when a prisoner is standing naked, she said. “‘One old guy walked in on me. I turned around, I was bare-assed nude and I said. ““Get a camera and take a picture, it'll last longer.’’ harassment and abuse Women in confinement face continual harassment and abuse from male guards, especially at Oakal- la women’s jail, says Ruth, who has served sentences in maximum-security units. “The male guards at: Oakalla, I just couldn’t be- lieve it. The screws they had working there were frisking you all the time. they weren't frisking you, they just had nothing better to do except feel up chicks. “The guards are like that, walking around, eyeing you all the time, leering. That’s. ‘The whole system is designed to make you feel like a piece of shit.’ exactly the way they look at you.”’ In December 1979, then Oakalla inmate Geri Fergu- son charged that guard Don Stevenson handcuffed, stripped and assaulted her. Last October, he was ac- quitted of an assault charge she laid, even though the judge admitted Stevenson’s behavior was ‘‘unwarranted and unjustified - even bar- baric.”’ In 1978, B.C. supreme court justice Patricia Proudfoot condemned the Oakalla women’s prison as a poorly-run institution whose male guards took advantage of their position to invade women’s privacy. As a result, she recommended that male staff be barred from areas that affect ‘‘hu- man decency and privacy.”’ But according to Van- couver activist group Wo- men Against Prisons: ‘‘If anything has changed since then, it’s been for the worse.”’ Sherry, a prisoner free on temporary absence, says guards use ‘‘women’s libe- ration’’ as an excuse for their brutality against wo- men. ‘‘They figure: ‘We can slap women around if we want because if they want to act like men, let them get up and fight like men.”’ Both she and Bev said they think prison adminis- trators turn a blind eye to the use of excessive force, whether by their own guards or police on the outside. The Vancouver police department could crack down on violence but in Bev’s words: ‘‘They don’t want to because they want the brutality of it, to keep us under control.’’ So women prisoners face threats and potential vio- lence whether they are behind bars or not, says Sherry. It’s an ugly cycle, as she explains: “‘They threaten you a lot in jail now. If you don’t do exactly as you’re told you have that hanging over your head - the threat of being sent back to Oakalla. When you’re in Oakalla_ they threaten you with Kingston prison. They’re constantly threatening you with some- thing.”’ Most women prisoners are too intimidated to cri- ticize or complain about guards because they fear reprisals .and removal of prison privileges, she adds. ‘‘There’s a lot of bullshit and nobody wants to do anything about it,’’ she said. “‘I’ve seen girls write up grievances for other girls to sign, but then when it came time to sign it the girls just backed~ right down. They’re afraid if they did sign that they’re signing away their life...that they will just be known as troublemakers and _ the screws will really put the screws to them.”’ Because they have so few rights in prison, confined women must often resort to strikes and sit-ins to have their demands heard, said Ruth. ‘Girls who had slashed themselves couldn't’ get psychiatric help,’’ she said. ‘‘We had to do things like have sit-down strikes to get some of these girls proper medical attention, psychia- trists and stuff. It was CTaZzys~ wie Yet prison officials often try to blame other prisoners for the self-mutilation or death of a woman prisoner, charge Women Against Pri- son’ members. For exam- ple Maureen Richards was found hanged in her Oakalla cell last November after waiting two weeks for a trial on remand; Women Against Prison members claim that the Oakalla men’s. unit padre said later: ‘The other prisoners didn’t do anything to prevent Maureen from doing it.’’ The only way to survive in prison without hassles is to be quiet, passive, and obe- dient, two women inter- viewed agreed. In Pat’s words: “‘If you ever go to jail, I’ll tell you this. Do exactly what they tell you to do. Don’t be one of the fuck-ups and think that you’re gonna make it because you're gonna be a hard-nose and do what you fuckin’ want to do. Because it doesn’t work.”’ Sherry adds: “You're supposed to be like a robot. They push the buttons and you do it. In jail you’re not even allowed to be honest. You have to go along with their bullshit. You want to tell them exactly how you _its scars, feel but doing that \could jeopardize your freedom.”’ Ruth said -she does not have the right to criticize her treatment in jail. ‘‘I can’t complain iif a guy’s bitchy and he takes it out on me. I mean, that’s going to happen. I played the game and I’m going to have to pay.”’ However, there are still many women confined who have chosen to protest and resistance, rather than pas- sive acceptance of their situation: In the fall of 1979, six women at Oakalla_barri- caded themselves in a cell for two days protesting harsh and arbitrary disci- pline; on New Year’s Eve, a peaceful sit-in by 20 women to protest prison conditions ended in a 14-hour riot. Women participants were placed in the solitary con- finement unit - an aban- doned cowbarn - which has been condemned and was ordered closed in 1975. The women occupied the cowbarn for 10 days and refused to leave until they won their demand to meet Oakalla’s prison warden. Whether women in jail choose active or silent re- sistance, prison still leaves" says Jerry Phillipson of Vancouver’s John Howard Society, a rehabilitative organization for ex-cons. For most, prison is the end of the road . for society’s problem cases, he said. ‘‘To deal with crime, first you have to deal with all the things that contribute to crime in society like bat- tered wives, battered ba- bies, violence on television, unemployment, poverty, Stc. ‘A lot of people get damaged in prison. There’s no question about that.’ “A lot of people get damaged in prison. There’s no question about that. The longer a person has been in prison, the less likely it is that a person will survive on the street.’’ : As Bev said, you never forget prison. She cried out ner former.prison number - 473 - with these words: “Everything that you write in jail has to have your number. You don’t wear it yn your chest anymore. You just wear it in here ‘your head).”’