In a startling glimpse of real life behind bars, PT interviews four femaleinmates--all serving sentences of 20 years or more in a maximum--security prison. Their stories tell not only of guilt, innocence, and the roots of violence, but also of healing and the beginning of forgiveness.
Nestled in a valley of one of New York City's most affluent suburbs is the only maximumsecurity prison for women in the state. Were it not for the 15-foot-tall, touchsensitive fences that encircle the compound, the squat, brick buildings within could be those of any college.
We are met by Sharon Smolick, director of the Family Violence program at the prison since 1987. Sharon, both an excon and a Revson Fellow from Columbia University, gestures in the direction of the guardhouse as the entrance gate grinds to a close.
"How many escape attempts does the facility have to contend with each year?" I ask her.
"I've never heard of one in the five years I've been here," she says.
"Not one?"
"In fact, the last took place several years before I arrived. Women just do not have the same reaction to incarceration that men do. Nationally and internationally, women simply do not try to escape. I believe that women don't see themselves as people who can afford to be on the run. The great majority of the inmates here have children or family obligations. They know that taking off isn't going to make things easier on them--or their kids. In addition, many find that they can spend some productive time here. It's horrifically ironic, but these women discovered that prison was the first place where they were clothed, fed, sheltered, and listened to in their entire lives."
Sharon listens to the women at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility with devout patience. A former inmate, she began to dispose of a lifetime's anger by educating herself. For six years, she has been both friend and confidante to the women at Bedford, slowly coaxing the fear from them by simply taking an interest.
At 10:00 A.M., the pathways between the main cell-block buildings are crowded with women wielding brooms, rakes, and paint brushes, many wearing very informal, brightly colored shirts and dresses.
"There's some latitude as far as dress is concerned," says Smolick, "but all the women must wear green pants if they wear shirts, or a green dress or skirt otherwise. They can wear something over the dress if they like, but the green element must be visible at all times. No blue, black, or orange on anything though."
"Why's that?"
"Blue and black are the colors of the officer's uniforms, and their raincoats are orange. A basic security precaution." Thirty-four percent of the 700 inmates at Bedford have been convicted of a capital offense--murder, conspiracy to murder, and kidnapping among the most common. Although it must house all the women offenders in the state whose sentences require maximum security, Bedford is dwarfed by its male counterparts such as Sing Sing and Attica.
It is unlike men's institutions in other ways as well. There are no dogs and no sharpshooters peering from watchtowers, just a lone officer in an attendant's booth at the main gate who smiles as he checks IDs.
Inside the front gate, the walls acquire an institutional yellow and gray, the air of informality disappears, and the walls close in as the security procedures begin: A menacingly large metal detector sends alarms coursing through the hall upon identifying pens, eyeglass frames, even the shoelace eyelets on boots. After several minutes on the phone with both the superintendent's office and the state's Department of Corrections in Albany, Sharon is able to clear our cassette recorder through the guard post.
C.J. was convicted of robbery and murder in Illinois in 1976. While on appeal bond in 1984, she was arrested for robbery in New York State and has not left a prison since. She celebrated her 38th birthday in Bedford this May. C.J. offers no excuses for and asks no sympathy from the people she speaks with. It makes sense to her now, though, that she had so little appreciation for life after a childhood in which her stepfather--a police offer--battered her with blackjacks and nightsticks from the time she was six.
CJ: As I grew up I began to think that men just abuse women, that smacking women around was how men took care of things. My husband did. He was a Vietnam vet and acted out physically as soon as he came back. More than once I woke up with a knife to my throat. He would be having a nightmare and think I was the enemy I guess.
One day in December he beat me so bad that I went into shock. My body just shut down. He got scared and took me to the hospital, and the next thing I remember was the examining room.
The doctors knew I had been beaten. They kept me in the hospital in an attempt to try and protect me. But my husband came up to the room I shared with another woman and started slapping me around, saying, "You better not tell anyone about it."
I freaked and started screaming, pressing all kinds of buttons trying to get somebody. Some attendants came in and put him out.
As he was leaving he said he was going to take my son and that I would never see him again. I was frantic--I had to do something. As soon as I got out of the hospital, my mother, who I hadn't spoken to in years, came with me to his house and we just marched in and took my boy back.
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