Victory! Doors Opened at Indiana Womens' Prison!
The letter below was written by Dr. Kelsey Kauffman, a former director of higher education at IWP, who led the campaign to open the doors there this summer.
August 1, 2020
Governor and Mrs. Holcomb
Indiana Statehouse
200 W. Washington St.
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Dear Gov. and Mrs. Holcomb,
On behalf of the 1,700 Hoosiers who signed our letter to you of June 16, 2020, I would like to thank you for unlocking the doors at the Indiana Women’s Prison, thus giving the women relief from the heat, access to toilets and water, and protection in case of fire. We are grateful.
Because you have both modeled unusual compassion and hope for people in prison, especially women, over the past few years, I want to draw your attention to what I see as the underlying assumption on which this failed policy rested and why it is problematic for our state.
In conversations with administrators and employees at the DOC this year, I have heard the terms “gender neutrality” and “gender blindness” used repeatedly to justify policies as divergent as limiting women in prison to the same amount of toilet paper that men receive (despite their anatomical differences) all the way up to mandating the amount of time women must spend locked in their cells. Thus, Commissioner Carter’s cryptic response to our June 16 letter was that IWP “is a maximum-security facility.” His meaning was clear: In men’s maximum-security prisons, cell doors are closed and locked when occupied; IWP is currently classified by the DOC as maximum-security; therefore, cell doors at IWP also need to be closed and locked.
Although “gender neutrality” and “gender blindness” may be important principles in many arenas of public life, I believe they lead to outcomes in prisons that you and the citizens of our state would not favor.
The paths that lead women to prison and back home again are very different from those for men. Most of the incarcerated women that I have worked with over the past 50 years (as a correctional officer, researcher, and teacher) come to prison with substantial childhood trauma and sexual abuse that often continued unabated as adults. Moreover, 80% of women in prison are mothers and they are far more likely than men in prison to play central roles in their children’s lives before, during, and after incarceration.
A wise former superintendent of IWP used to tell visitors that every woman in her prison was a damaged woman and her goal was to provide them a safe space to heal. Through what we would now call “trauma-informed care,” the old prison sought to return women to society not just with employable skills, but more importantly, with the emotional and physical health and skills that would allow them to help break inter-generational cycles of poverty, abuse, addiction, and incarceration.
I hope that you will steer Indiana back to this model of women’s prisons. And, to the extent that we embrace gender neutrality, I hope that will translate into treating men in prison with the greater dignity that has heretofore been accorded to women.
Sincerely,
Kelsey Kauffman