Tag Archive: Tutwiler

Former Tutwiler inmate says broken leg not treated for days

January 10, 2015

ledbetterFrom Corporate Media

BIRMINGHAM, AL –Imagine slipping and falling on a wet floor, suffering a painful fracture in your leg that requires surgery, but not receiving a diagnosis, treatment or even pain medication for more than three days. Imagine only having an ice pack to apply to that injury as it continues to swell, turning black and blue. Imagine being told you’re not “on the list” to see a doctor as your pain goes from severe to excruciating. Fifty-seven-year-old Susan Ledbetter doesn’t have to imagine an ordeal like that, she says she lived it.

In 2012, Ledbetter began serving almost nine months at Alabama’s Tutwiler Prison for Women for drug charges. In May 2012, she turned herself into Calhoun County authorities, pleaded guilty to second degree unlawful manufacturing of a controlled substance and in her words, “wanted to do her time and get on with her life.”

She reported to Tutwiler Prison June 1, 2012 and shortly after arriving, began working in the prison’s kitchen.

Ledbetter, a mother and grandmother, a former truck driver and bartender, has not had an easy life. We interviewed her outside her mobile home in rural Calhoun County, a home she returned to after prison with no power or running water. Her utilities were turned off while she was incarcerated and it took her months to scrape together enough money to get them turned back on. (more…)

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Mothers Behind Bars

May 12, 2014

An exterior view of The Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, in Wetumpka, Ala., Feb. 6, 2014. Corrections officers have raped, beaten and harrassed women inside the prison for at least 18 years, according to a Justice Department investigation, but the appetite for costly reform in Alabama appears minimal as conditions remain bad and prisoners are still fearful despite the investigation.

An exterior view of The Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, in Wetumpka, Ala., Feb. 6, 2014. Corrections officers have raped, beaten and harrassed women inside the prison for at least 18 years, according to a Justice Department investigation. 

By Samantha Sarra/ From Truth Out 

For mothers behind bars, the prison walls are held up with patriarchy, racism and poverty. Injustice is the mortar that holds together the bricks of the prison industrial complex and the handcuffs worn by female inmates are still tightly linked to the shackles of slavery and oppression.

A law passed by the New Jersey Legislature in February 1804 declared the children born to slave mothers to be “free” at birth, but they still remained bound as servants to their mother’s owners until their 20s. Two hundred years later and true abolition has yet to take place with the continued racialized criminalization of poverty and mothers behind bars, whose children remain bound to generational cycles of trauma and discrimination.

The legacy of children being entangled in the repercussions of legislation continues as Republican Governor Bill Haslam passed a law last month in Tennessee criminalizing women for their pregnancy outcomes. The law, which will disproportionately affect already marginalized mothers, would make it a crime to carry a pregnancy to term if you struggle with addiction or substance abuse. The punitive prosecution of pregnant mothers, charging them with criminal assault rather than creating better access to health care, was a move opposed by major medical associations, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the American Civil Liberties Union. (more…)

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Alabama Women’s Prison Still Guilty of Sexual Abuse

February 8, 2014

tutwilerFrom The Associated Press

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Department of Corrections officials and Gov. Robert Bentley’s office say they had been working to improve conditions at Julia Tutwiler Prison before a federal investigation found evidence of inmates being sexually abused by staff and fellow prisoners.

A report from the U.S. Department of Justice said instances of sexual abuse at the hands of prison staff and others have been underreported for nearly 20 years. The report also said jail staff condoned a strip show inside the facility and would deliberately watch inmates shower and use the restroom.

Federal officials visited the prison in April and recently sent their findings to Bentley in a 36-page letter. Investigators have said prisoners there fear for their safety. (more…)

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