Opinion: Incarcerated Women in Texas Need to Be Heard

In December of last year, the Texas Civil Rights Project released a 20-plus-page report titled “Solitary Confinement in Texas: A Crisis With No End.” I was eager to read it, as I am going into my eighth year of solitary confinement at Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, Texas. But when I came to the section about “Burdens on Women,” I was disappointed to find just two paragraphs with a single personal anecdote.

I was not surprised: By design, our daily lives in this women’s solitary facility are hidden from the public. There are details about our lives in “the hole” that only folks currently living it can credibly describe. Society would be appalled, but we’re never invited to participate in discussions concerning us. And I find over and over that well-meaning organizations who conduct prison investigations, reports, and surveys solely focus on men’s prisons or minimize our experience.

Texas Prison Reform, an anti-solitary advocacy with a self-described spokesperson for people in solitary, appeared in multiple media interviews only voicing men’s demands for basic human rights to end the hunger strike last year. Women in solitary were also suffering punishment for the hunger strike, but nobody responded to us.

Texas Prisons Community Advocates relentlessly campaigned for air conditioning in prisons. They too have perfected the ostrich method by never asking, “What does it look like for women’s bodies to experience extreme 120°-130° heat in solitary cells?” I reached out to organizers to explain menopause and side effects of certain medications which are overwhelmingly prescribed to women to increase our heat intolerance. Survival forces us to be nude or wear wet undergarments only; it’s often misinterpreted as an invitation for sex. Their following surveys still excluded our experiences.

The media isn’t exempt. Michael Barajas, formerly of Texas Observer, reported on solitary after state legislators voiced disbelief of the length of time family members said their loved ones remain in segregation. Guess who wasn’t included? Women in solitary. Even the Texas Inmate Families Association excludes women in solitary in their newsletters. Updates are centered on men’s prisons.

The differences between men and women’s facilities are numerous. When the Texas Department of Criminal Justice justifies the use of solitary confinement to “keep gangs from recruiting,” incarcerated women all felt the same way: Women’s prisons don’t have gangs.

As our demands are ignored, abuse has proliferated. Persistent sexual abuse led us to demand a ban on all-male staff working in our building, escorting and remaining beside us during medical visits, and responding to use-of-force incidents. Not only have the demands been ignored by the prison administration, but they’ve also been ignored by prison reform organizations on the outside. Few organizations seem to recognize the urgency of the gender-based, sexual violence that women are particularly vulnerable to in solitary confinement.

Silencing our voices leads to a fundamentally misguided approach that men’s prisons’ problems and solutions can simply be copied and pasted onto women’s prisons.

Our experiences reveal the fullest possible account on the abuse spectrum from relentless harassment to voyeurism, groping, and rape.

Healing can only come with acknowledgment. Acknowledgment can only come with attention. Don’t be fooled into believing just because nobody is paying attention means it’s not happening everywhere, especially in Texas. Abuse in women’s prisons is not an individual or institutional but an endemic feature of systemic failure, and it’s time the public paid attention.

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Kwaneta Harris is a former nurse, business owner, and expat, now incarcerated journalist and a Haymarket Writing Freedom Fellow. She brings experiences from each profession to illuminate how the experience of being incarcerated in the largest state prison in Texas is vastly different for women in ways that directly map onto a culture rooted in misogyny. She is supported by the program Empowerment Avenue, who is submitting this on Kwaneta’s behalf.