an assessment of the black female prisoner in the south

An Assessment of the Black Female Prisoner in the SouthAuthor(s): Laurence FrenchSource: Signs, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Winter, 1977), pp. 483-488Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173298 .

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REVISIONS/REPORTS

An Assessment of the Black Female Prisoner in the South

Laurence French

In 1949 Harold Garfinkel wrote that black and white justice systems in the South are administered by the same elite power structure, but justice for blacks is vindictive and emotional, while justice for whites is secular and rational.1 The disproportionate number of lower-class blacks now incarcerated in North Carolina indicates that Garfinkel's thesis may still hold true for that state. Other patterns of southern justice include the incarceration of more people for longer terms than other regions of the country and a very high ratio of male to female prisoners (97 percent male to 3 percent female, compared with the national average of 85 percent male and 15 percent female). In part, this ratio results from the avoidance of "hard" sentences for white female offenders. However, this chivalrous lenience in sentencing does not seem to apply to black women, who are overrepresented in North Carolina prisons. This report will describe that overrepresentation.

The North Carolina Correctional System

North Carolina's adult correctional system consists of seventy-seven facilities: one maximum security unit (Central Prison); three closed custody units, including the Correction Center for Women (Women's

1. Harold Garfinkel, "Research Note in Inter- and Intra-racial Homicides," Social Forces 27 (May 1949): 370-81.

[Signs:Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1977, vol. 3, no. 2] ? 1977 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

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Black Women Prisoners

Prison); twenty-three medium security units; and fifty minimum custody facilities. A unique aspect of this system is its two-year penalty for mis- demeanor sentences, twice that of the national average. In addition, the state has the highest incarceration rate in the United States; over 200 citizens out of every 100,000 are imprisoned. Miscegenation laws and "outlaw" statutes (bringing declared outlaws in dead or alive) still exist on the state's law books. The capital punishment record indicates that 706 persons received the death sentence since 1910, while 362, or slightly more than half, were actually executed. Of these, 282 were black males, seventy-three white males, five Indian males, and two black females.2 This is from a state which is 75 percent white, 24 percent black, and approximately 1 percent Indian.

* * *

This correctional system is the environment from which I obtained the profile of women prisoners in North Carolina presented here. I compared the entire 1972 incarcerated female population with the state's male maximum security unit-Central Prison.3 The variables examined are nature of offense, race, education, and occupation, as well as the major variable, sex of prisoners.

Type of offense.-I classified crimes as personal (violent), property, or victimless offenses. Unlike women, most males are incarcerated for personal offenses (see table 1). In both sex groups, a little over one-third of their members are imprisoned for property offenses. However, the racial breakdown shows that a greater proportion of blacks than whites are involved in personal offenses, with males more involved than their

Table 1

Type of Offense

Personal Property Nonvictim

N % N N % N N

White women .............. 33 33 50 51 16 16 99 Black women .............. 82 43 64 33 47 24 193

Total .................... 115 39 114 39 63 22 292

White men ................. 201 54 144 39 26 7 371 Black men ................. 273 63 136 31 26 6 435

Total .................... 474 59 280 35 52 6 806

2. North Carolina Department of Corrections, North Carolina Death Row Statistics, pre- pared by Adam Behre (Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Corrections, 1972).

3. Central Prison was selected since it houses the most serious male offenders, hence providing the best basis for comparison with the female inmate population.

484 French



Winter 1977 485

female counterparts. White offenders, on the other hand, account for a higher proportion of property crimes than do blacks, with the greatest variance occurring among female offenders. Victimless offenses ac- counted for the smallest proportion of offenders of both sexes. In con- sidering these statistics, it should be remembered that personal offenses, such as homicide or assault, often arise out of emotional altercations while property offenses, in comparison, most often involve a greater degree of planning or premeditation. National trends as well as those of North Carolina bear this out.4 It would seem, then, that a greater proportion of black offenders were involved in explosive, stressful situations which in turn resulted in their arrest, conviction, and incarceration for personal crimes.

Using the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "Crime Index," I note a significant difference in types of crime between the male and female populations (see table 2).5 The major reason for this lies in the variation in property crimes, with women committing a greater portion of the serious property offenses.

Racial distribution.-The racial distribution of incarcerated females in North Carolina clearly involves an inverse relationship when compared with the statewide racial distribution (see table 3). A similar, but not as significant, relationship holds for the male prison population.

Table 2

"Crime Index" Offenses

Women Men

White Black N White Black N Total

Violent crimes: Murder.................. 11 14 25 58 86 144 169 Rape .................... 0 0 0 32 39 71 71 Aggravated assault ....... 3 12 15 15 30 45 60 Robbery ................. 3 5 8 62 69 131 139

Total ................. ... ... 48 ...... 391 439 (64%) (83%)

Property crimes: Burglary................. 0 0 0 15 8 23 23 Grand larceny............ 11 14 25 17 25 42 67 Auto theft ............... 1 1 2 6 11 17 19

Total .................. ... ... 27 ... ... 82 109 (36%) (17%),

X2 = 13.005/sig. 2 .001 level.

4. U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1972 Uniform Crime Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1972).

5. Ibid.

Signs




Table 3

Racial Distribution

White Black

N % N % N

Women's Prison ............. 99 34 193 66 292 N.C. female population* ...... 2,128,000 75 672,000 24 2,800,000 Central Prison (men) ......... 363 45 443 55 806 N.C. male population* ....... 2,079,000 75 621,000 23 2,700,000

*Estimated population.

Occupation.-Using the Hollingshead seven-category scale, I com-

pared the occupations of the female and male prisoners.6 All the female

prisoners fell into the three lowest occupational categories in the scale: low-skilled occupations (category 5), unskilled laborers (category 6), and the marginally employed and unemployed (category 7). More black than white women prisoners fell into the two lowest categories. This is a

significant factor since the poor rarely receive adequate justice.7 The serious male offender, in comparison, had both racial groups

represented in all seven occupational categories, with the only major differences involving the low skilled (category 5) and the marginally employed and unemployed (category 7). As table 4 indicates, there was a

significant variation in occupational differences by sex, with a greater proportion of the female inmates coming from impoverished back-

grounds. Education.-Both samples had low educational achievement, with a

majority of both female and male inmates not finishing high school (see table 5), but the black female offenders had the lowest achievement level.

* * *

This social profile portrays North Carolina's serious male and female offenders as being black, poorly educated, and marginally em-

ployable. The criminal offenses for which these people are imprisoned are of little consequence when one considers the much larger number of arrests in the state for the same time period. During this time over 100,000 serious offenses (index crimes) occurred-a figure nearly ten times the total incarcerated population for the state-yet most of those incarcerated were for crimes other than index offenses. When female/ male comparisons are made, significant differences surface between the

6. See A. B. Hollingshead and F. C. Redlich, Social Class and Mental Illness (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958), pp. 390-91.

7. Patricia Wald, "Poverty and Criminal Justice," in The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Nicholas Katzenback, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967).

486 French



Table 4

Civilian Occupations of Prisoners*

Index 1 Index 2 Index 3 Index 4 Index 5 Index 6 Index 7

N N % N % N N % N % N %%% N White women ........ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 16 16 21 22 61 62 98 Black women ........ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17 9 56 29 118 62 191

Total .............. 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 33 11 77 27 179 62 289 White men........... 4 1 7 2 9 2 15 4 154 42 89 24 94 25 372 Black men ........... 5 1 10 2 14 3 20 5 91 21 121 28 173 40 434

Total .............. 9 1 17 2 23 3 35 5 245 30 210 26 267 33 806 Total prisoners ... 9 1 17 2 23 3 35 5 278 25 287 26 446 41 1,095

*Based on Hollingshead's 7-category scale: = major professionals, 2 = lesser professionals, 3 = semiprofessionals, 4 = clerical and technical occupations, 5 = skilled manual workers, 6 =:semiskilled workers, and 7 = unskilled workers and unemployed.

Table 5

Educational Achievement by Grade

Less than Completed Eighth- Completed Beyond Eighth Eighth Twelfth Twelfth Twelfth

N % N % N % N % N % N

White women ........... 19 20 11 11 47 48 12 12 9 9 98 Black women ........... 46 24 19 10 95 50 21 11 10 5 191

Total ................. 65 23 30 10 142 49 33 11 19 7 289

White men.............. 92 25 77 21 120 32 60 16 23 6 372 Black men .............. 138 32 46 11 153 35 70 16 27 6 434

Total................. 230 29 123 15 273 34 130 16 50 6 806




two populations. The female sample has a higher proportion of blacks with poorer educational and occupational backgrounds than does the male population. A greater proportion of black female offenders are institutionalized for victimless crimes, notably drug-related offenses.

This overrepresentation of black women may be the result of discrimination at various stages in the judicial process. The white male police officer may arrest her or not. The typical white male prosecutor then has the legal discretion to prosecute or not and to reduce charges or not. The typically white male judge has the discretion to assign reason- able bail or to deny bail altogether. Once imprisoned, women in North Carolina, as in many states, do the laundry and prepare garments for the state institutions, including jails, prisons, and mental hospitals. Long hours under sordid working conditions only add to the psychological problems encountered by the female offender. She may also be sub- jected to sexual harassment. All of these factors combine to make her eventual rehabilitation virtually impossible under the current system. Although the patterns of justice in North Carolina, and in the South in general, may be extreme, black women offenders may well suffer similar forms of discrimination elsewhere in the United States. More research outlining such problems, combined with a new feminist awareness among criminal justice practitioners, is needed to eliminate racial and sexual discrimination against black women within the judicial system.

Department of Criminal Justice University of Nebraska at Omaha

488 French



an assessment of the black female prisoner in the south

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