Three themes, presented in Table 2 with corresponding tenets of reproductive justice, emerged from the data: (1) They definitely take advantage, (2) You’re never going to get these kids, and (3) Why can’t I get out of this hell I’m living in?
Table 2
|
Theme
|
Tenets of Reproductive Justice
|
1
|
They definitely take advantage
|
Tenet 1: The right to bodily autonomy
|
2
|
You’re never going to get these kids
|
Tenet 2: The right to have or not have children
|
3
|
Why can’t I get out of this hell I’m living in?
|
Tenet 3: The right to parent and live in safe and sustainable environments
|
The participants’ demographic data, presented in Table 3, were distressing. All of the women (N = 12) had at least one felony charge and had been detained in county jail. Almost all (n = 11) had been on adult probation. Half of the women had attended only middle school and had a seventh (n = 2) or eighth (n = 4) grade education: 9 of the women (75%) reported an annual income of less than $9,000 per year.
Table 3
Participants (N = 12)
|
n
|
Range
|
Mean
|
Age, years
|
|
|
|
<31
|
1
|
|
|
32–38
|
5
|
|
|
>39
|
6
|
|
|
Ethnicity
|
Latina
|
12
|
|
|
Relationship Status
|
Single
|
7
|
|
|
Living with partner
|
4
|
|
|
Married
|
1
|
|
|
Number of Children
|
≤4
|
6
|
1–4
|
2.5
|
≥5
|
6
|
5–8
|
5.5
|
Highest Level of Education Completed
|
Middle school
|
6
|
|
|
High school
|
1
|
|
|
Associates/
Certification
|
4
|
|
|
Bachelors
|
1
|
|
|
Employment Status
|
Unemployed
|
10
|
|
|
Part-time
|
0
|
|
|
Full-time
|
2
|
|
|
Annual Income
|
Less than $9,000
|
9
|
|
|
$10,000–$19,000
|
2
|
|
|
$20,000–$29,000
|
0
|
|
|
$30,000–$39,000
|
1
|
|
|
Number of Times Arrested
|
|
1–19
|
9
|
Nature of Arrests
|
Low-level drug
|
8
|
|
|
Petty theft
|
7
|
|
|
DUI
|
1
|
|
|
Traffic tickets
|
2
|
|
|
Prostitution
|
2
|
|
|
Assault
|
1
|
|
|
County jail
|
12
|
18 hr.–22 months
|
11 months
|
State prison
|
2
|
1 month–2.2 years
|
13 months
|
Federal prison
|
0
|
|
|
Community supervision
|
11
|
2–5 years
|
2.5 years
|
Transition home
|
2
|
9–12 months
|
10.5 months
|
Misdemeanor
|
11
|
|
|
Felony
|
12
|
|
|
Theme 1: They definitely take advantage
The first theme, they definitely take advantage, reflected the right to bodily autonomy. The women described how the profound poverty and discrimination that resulted from their arrest, charge, and/or conviction limited their control over their own bodies. This, in turn, left them particularly vulnerable to sexual violence that resulted in feelings of “not [being] human.” One woman described how she was treated “inhumanely” following arrest: “It’s negative and bad. It’s bad in every aspect. I understand that we broke the law, but we’re still human.”
Another woman explained how she became a target of physical abuse once others discovered that she had been arrested for drug possession: “They would take me seriously until they heard I was a drug addict. The fact that I was on drugs meant that it was okay for someone to beat on me.” Following arrest, the women collectively described being in an even more vulnerable position than before, forced to “do whatever [people] wanted them to do”—another example of limited bodily autonomy. Often this vulnerability was exploited by individuals whom the women should have been able to trust. For example, one woman described the sexual violence she experienced at the hands of her boyfriend after she was released from jail:
He forced me down onto the bed on my stomach, ripped off my underwear, he was drunk, and he raped me. I was screaming out, “Help,” and he was covering my mouth and punching the back of my head, doing his thing. I thought I was gonna die. He pulled out a gun, held a gun to my head, finished, and then passed out.
Another woman described being held captive by her boyfriend while being physically and sexually assaulted for 10 days:
I was running from him throughout the house. He was like, “Come here. Let’s make this even better in blood.” He got a chair, sat me on the chair. He duct-taped my legs, my arms and my mouth about 10 times. He started shooting and hitting me with the gun. He really messed up my face. He threw me in the closet for two days. [The sexual violence] went on for about 10 days.
The women also described being forced into “escorting” for money by boyfriends on whom they relied for survival. Like so many in the sample, one woman described how these men, with whom she sought safety, had sexually exploited her for their own financial gain. As a result, many of the women turned to substance use as a means of coping with their trauma:
Escorting for them ... just selling my body to give them the money. One of the guys got me into strip clubs. I started dancing, and all the money I would make would go to them. That led to my addiction. So, money that I did make—half of it would go to them, and the other half would go to my drugs.
Although many of the women had been involved in sex work prior to arrest, they described the devastation of returning to that work upon release just to survive the economic hardship resulting from incarceration. One woman explained that being a sex worker made her feel “ugly”: “I just felt like I have to oversex myself. My self-esteem was low. I felt useless. I just felt ugly.” In many cases, the women’s partners took full advantage of their vulnerability by sexually exploiting them further through sex work, which became more “dangerous” and “violent” over time due to their inability to defend themselves. Their partners also used the women’s prior criminal records against them, knowing that they had limited social safety nets and resources. One woman recounted being held at gunpoint by a client while her boyfriend waited outside the hotel room:
[My boyfriend] took me on this website, on the internet. Whenever these guys would call me, they would take me over there to have sex. They [her boyfriend] would wait outside and collect the money. Then they’d just take me to the next one, and the next one, and it just got really ugly. It’s very scary. ’Cause some situations [clients] would hold me at gunpoint.
Isolation was a common tactic that partners used to control the women. One woman described how, after her release from jail, her boyfriend moved her to Hawaii, away from her support network back in Texas, giving him even greater control over her body:
[My boyfriend] used [my vulnerability after arrest] to his advantage. He got a job in Hawaii. He was like, “I want you to come with me,” so of course, who wouldn’t wanna move to Hawaii? I took my son, and we went to Hawaii. [My boyfriend] immediately was like, “I made you a website. I made you an account. I already got you these clients.” It was really sick.
In addition to the sexual violence perpetuated by their partners, the women described being vulnerable to persons in positions of authority, such as those working in the jail system: guards, pretrial bond officers, police officers, and court appointed attorneys. The women explained that, while they were in custody, these individuals “used their power” to satisfy their own sexual desires. One woman described meeting with a pretrial bond officer who became sexually inappropriate once he discovered that she had been charged with prostitution, an offense attached to significant discrimination according to the women: “They literally just think that they can touch me—they can touch me without asking me or anything like that. I don’t know. It’s just weird how they think they can just do stuff like that to you.” Another woman recalled how her court-appointed attorney had coerced her into having sex with him by threatening her with jail time if she refused to comply. She described the first of many times he sexually assaulted her:
He started taking my clothes off. I was like, “Whoa, what are you doing? I just wanna leave.” He was like, “No.” He started having sex with me. I was just crying. I was telling him, “No. Stop, please.” He started just having sex with me. Then after that he was like, “You better not say nothing because I can make it a lot worse for you.”
A similar story was echoed by another woman, who described inappropriate sexual conduct of the guards in the county jail. She felt powerless to tell anyone:
I remember there was this one guard. She was trying to talk to me. When I would go and take a shower, she would [follow me]. I just felt like she would do that on purpose. She would go and look behind the shower wall. There’s not much that you could do or say 'cause you’re in jail. Your word doesn’t really matter when you’re in jail. Who are they gonna believe? Are they gonna believe these convicts, or are they gonna believe somebody that’s in uniform?
Yet another woman shared this experience:
Whenever you’re passing through a different hallway or corridor, [the guards] have to pat you down and check to make sure you don’t have any type of contraband. They definitely take advantage of that and feel you up. I wanna say probably it happens more with females than it does with males.
Even women who might not have personally experienced this abuse of power knew of women who had. One said that her incarcerated female friend had disclosed that a guard was forcing her to have sex with him: “She said, ‘Look, that’s the guard that I have sex with.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘Yeah, he takes me somewhere [in the back] to have sex.’”
Theme 2: You're never gonna get these kids
The second theme, you’re never gonna get these kids back, represents the right to have or not have children. Incarceration had a profound effect on the women’s parental and reproductive rights, including limited contact with their children, barriers to reproduce when and how they wanted, and access to pregnancy and abortion care services. Prior to her incarceration, one woman described how her desire to terminate a pregnancy led her to engage in illegal activity to acquire the necessary money for an abortion. As a result, she was arrested, jailed, and forced to continue the pregnancy until she eventually gave birth while incarcerated:
I wanted to have an abortion. I didn’t want any kids. With that money that they were gonna pay me, I was gonna go have an abortion. I guess God didn’t want me to do it, so I ended up having him. That’s the only reason I did it was the money.
The woman who was coerced into having sex with her court-appointed attorney represents a different example of denied reproductive rights. When the attorney discovered that she was pregnant, he demanded that she have an abortion:
When I stopped answering [his] calls [he stopped representing me]. I had a warrant. I ended up getting caught. I stayed in jail for six months. He went to the jail and said, “You wanna try this again, or you wanna go to prison?” Who wants to sit in jail? I got out. Then [the sexual assault] kept on happening. I ended up getting pregnant. Then he made me go get an abortion.
All the women who did have children described not feeling “fully present” following their arrest: “It affects everybody in such a huge way because you can’t really fully be present. You’re always just so stressed out about what you have to do to care for the kids.” The women further explained that their arrest history and resulting poverty were a constant source of discrimination. Without a social or economic safety net, the women were at risk for involuntary termination of parental rights. One woman described how Child Protective Services had used her history of arrest and being a survivor of sexual abuse as a justification for removing her children from her custody:
[Child Protective Services] would use [my history of surviving sexual abuse] against me. I told them, “Okay, I’ve been having problems. I was sexually abused,” and they would just focus on that. I was drug testing and doing everything right, and they were focused on who was I sleeping with. They treated me really bad and they wouldn’t graduate me. I told them I wanted to take care of my kids, but they shipped them off to [foster care]. I felt like they were just not on my team. They weren’t trying to work with me.
Another woman said that Child Protective Services had terminated her parental rights due to her previous arrest for sex-working, “There was five different women, but they all just said, ‘You’re never gonna get these kids. I’ve never seen anybody with your record get kids from Child Protective Services.’ It felt like they were saying, ‘You're just not good enough.’” The overwhelming economic stress and discrimination that followed arrest caused the women to live their lives in “survival mode,” which also prevented them from being fully present with their children: “It’s hard because you don’t know what’s gonna happen at any time. When you’re going’ back and forth [to meet the requirements of probation], you can’t work or anything. You’re forced into survival mode.”
The women also described incarceration-associated discrimination and how it limited their choices of intimate partners, especially when their arrest was due to sex work. This further limited their ability to form healthy relationships, have more children when they wanted to, and receive social support for parenting the children whom they already had. One woman described how difficult it was to find a partner following her arrest:
I feel neglected by society, outcasted, and shunned. Who will take you seriously? Who will date you? Who will wanna marry you? Who will wanna be a father to your child? You have to be all those things, you have to fill all those shoes, but how, and in a timely fashion before your kid’s a teenager?
Theme 3: Why can’t I get out of this hell I’m living in?
The third theme, why can’t I get out of this hell I’m living in? represents the right to parent in safe and sustainable environments. The sexual violence that the women experienced led to the deterioration of their relationships as well as the safety and sustainability of their environments. They described discrimination because they were single mothers, because they had children outside of marriage, and because they had past histories of arrest and sexual violence. One mother described verbal abuse: “Especially having a child and not being married, [according to my] family, ‘You were sleeping’ around. You only knew this guy for three months before you got pregnant. You’re a whore.” Following arrest, given this absence of a healthy social network, women preferred to self-isolate, which further deteriorated their overall safety. One described suffering from isolation as a mother following arrest:
It’s dark, and it’s painful, and there’s trauma, and you’re so angry. Because I’m remembering all the things that happened that led me there, and I’m thinking, why can’t I just get out of this hell that I’m living in?
Another woman avoided certain people and places. She intentionally wore a ring to indicate that she was married and to avoid being approached by men and further victimized:
I just avoid certain places completely. When I take my daughter places, I go places where there’s only single moms. I try not to wear sexy stuff. I’m not in a relationship, but I wear a wedding ring, so people think I’m married, so guys don’t try to talk to me.
The women did not want to engage in sex work any longer; however, after encountering the social and economic barriers that followed their arrests, many found themselves with no other choice. Often this work involved men who had perpetuated sexual violence against them in the past. Once again, they found themselves needing to rely on these men for survival. As one woman explained, “I kind of just always had money issues, and I turned to another way to make money. I always fell back into [sex work] every time I would come across hard times, which is why I always ended up incarcerated for the same reason.” Another woman told a similar story: “I turned to [sex work] that I shouldn’t have been doing, and [that] had consequences and repercussions that I had to deal with. It was just a money issue.”
The women felt that the very nature of the criminal justice system forced them to continue with sex work. Several chose “soliciting” because it was a lesser offense than petty theft:
I had stacked up eight felony theft enhancements. Every time I went to jail, my sentences were getting longer and longer. At this point, I’m facing more than two years, and I’m just so tired. I’m like, okay. I’m not gonna steal anymore. I’m gonna just go out and solicit myself because I don’t want to go to prison for a very long time. I have actually two solicitation incarcerations—misdemeanors.
One woman described how women charged with “prostitution” are forced to do “whatever they have to do” to support themselves and their children:
A lotta women are incarcerated for prostitution. They have no other option or chance to be able to make money, and yet cannot be around their kids, cannot take care of their kids because they’re judged for that, and can’t get a job. We would work a job if we were able to. We women go through what we have to, to take care of our kids. Whatever we have to.
Another had engaged in sex work for “good” reasons, such as providing for her children despite its being “dangerous.” She stated, “We don’t want to do it. Some will do it for good, like taking care of your kids. It still takes a lot to do it because of the danger. It’s dangerous.” Others echoed those dangers:
It was scary. I just didn’t know who I was gonna run into, or what could possibly happen. ’Cause anything could possibly happen. It’s just staying out there. I was very scared. I felt alone, real hurt. I became an ugly person, just ’cause I have a lot of trust issues, really bad trust issues.
This fear was accompanied by a sense of being “helpless,” because there were no other good options for employment:
I felt really ugly with myself. I just never understood why I was going through everything that I was going through. I felt really helpless, hopeless, worthless, angry, hurt. I felt like a really ugly person inside.
Even the women who had never engaged in sex work felt pressured by others to “solicit”:
I did feel pressured [by people in the community] to solicit because the people that I knew would do that. I did feel like, well, I might as well. Never got around to it, and I thank God for it. My thing was the shoplifting. I had to, ’cause where was I gonna get money from? I didn’t have family helping me.
As a means of coping with the negative emotions and fear that accompanied sex work, many of the women relied on substance use to escape associated trauma: “It was hard doing [sex work] being’ sober ’cause it’s not normal. I had to be high to do that.” Another woman said,
I started, going to truck stops, and then guys that I knew, like drug dealers, they all wanted to be with me. Then later on in the year, that’s when I started walking the streets. It got to the point that I just wanted money for my next fix. That’s when the heroin kicked in. I needed my heroin to live, to wake up. I would get sick.
Many of the women also felt that sex work increased their need to access healthcare services, yet they avoided healthcare because they feared discrimination. One woman had avoided obtaining essential healthcare because she was too ashamed to reveal her history of sex work to healthcare providers:
Having that solicitation conviction and having exposed myself out there, and just having to relive that sexual abuse that happened to me as a young girl. That really impacted me because, I’ve never been able to really say freely to nobody, and when [doctors and nurses] ask me [about my sexual health], I'm like, "No. No, that’s not true.”
The women also recounted discrimination that they felt to be grounded in misunderstanding yet that still served to silence their voices because they were judged by society:
I think, in society, a lot of people believe that it’s what you asked for. It’s what you deserved. I think it’s just a stigma that sticks there, and people just can’t see past that. It’s so hard because you’re prejudged, and they’re looking at you different.
This lack of understanding, along with the limited dialogue surrounding their lived experiences, kept the women trapped in environments that were often harmful and dangerous. One woman said that society “left her hanging” when she tried to access assistance:
Too often for single moms and people that I know have been arrested, when that time comes when you gather the strength to say something, they just leave you hanging. Society at large does not know how to answer that call because they haven’t heard it. Then they just turn away, and I think that is something that needs to be addressed because there’s got to be a dialogue.
This woman, along with many others in the sample, desired the opportunity to talk about their experiences following incarceration, with the hope of changing the “dialogue” about incarceration at the intersection of mothering. They believed that if people only knew their true circumstances, some of the discrimination and barriers that they had encountered might be resolved.