My dear friend Helen M. sent me the link to a report about women in prisons around the world.  She knew I would be interested for several reasons.  I have worked for Women Organized Against Rape, I hold 12-Step Meetings almost every Monday night at the Cannery, a women's pod in the Philadelphia Prisons System and I have mental health issues.  Those reasons aside, I am a woman and a human being.  So, how could this report fail to touch me?
   
Although this story was deeply disturbing as a global issue, I'm realistic enough to know that many may not be driven to read about the plight of prisoners half-way around the world.  It's a shame, because we all have mothers, grand-mothers and most have daughters, or sisters, nieces or aunts.   We are in the terrible but wonderful sister-hood of women who bleed five days out of the month and still live.  We carry life, sometimes when it's forced upon us, for nine months.  We forget our pain and give the world and men more gifts of life.

Yet it is true in almost every woman's life, wherever they hail from, they are regarded as lesser beings than men.  From pay disparity here, to the arranged child-bride marriages, from here to where there are no more women.  Our actions and emotions are too often magnified, be it the career/child choice or the tough (bitch) vs. compassionate (weak) feelings that we display.

....US women who are charged with violent crimes, including murder and attempted murder, have many times landed in prison after violently fighting back from years of unbearable domestic rape and/or psychological abuse. The cycle of abuse does not always end against these women inside prison facilities.

A recent Aug 26, 2008 report, by the US Department of Justice Review Panel on Prison Rape, gathered statistics from public hearings held in Spring of 2007, outlining that, "Rapes in prisons can be reduced if the prison staff adopts a zero tolerance attitude toward such crimes and developed a system that identified and protected inmates who could be potential victims."

Ongoing injustice in the US prison system often only offers out-worn policies with little protection.
Impartial prison rape investigations which are completely fair and unbiased are very rare today in most global women's prisons....

Should you be interested in readring the voices and stories of female inmates in U.S. Prisons I can highly recommend a book to you.  Compiled by Wally Lamb, it is stories written by incarcerated women, who took writing courses taught by him.  An unusual situation, as most of the rehabilitation programs of the seventies have been cut, because of budget reasons.  We now prefer to ware-house, rather than to reform our prisoners.  The book is Couldn't Keep it to Myself.