Thread by @AthenaSalman

This letter from inside Arizona’s Perryville State Prison details the brutality & dangers of prison life for incarcerated women.

It also reminds us of the devastating impact that mass incarceration has on women & their families. Thread (1/12) smartjusticeaz.org/stories/a-lett…

The author is 1 of ~4,300 women held in AZ prisons. AZ is a leading driver of women’s incarceration, which stands at a historic & global high in the US even as overall incarceration rates have finally begun to fall alongside historic low crime rates (2/12) prisonpolicy.org/global/women/2…

The number of women incarcerated in AZ state prisons has more than doubled since 2000, far outpacing the 19% national growth of women in all state prisons over that time (3/12). fwd.us/news/arizona-i…

This explosive growth is largely due to policy decisions to impose prison time for first-time and non-violent offenses, with sentence lengths far beyond the national average. (4/12)

Drugs and drug-related crimes, including simple possession, continue to drive admissions of women into AZ prisons. In 2018, only around 18% of the 2,762 women admitted to prison were convicted of violent offenses (5/12). corrections.az.gov/sites/default/…

More than 40% of women admitted to AZ prisons in 2018 were convicted of drug offenses, with more than 3 in 4 of those women admitted for possession alone.

Nearly *15% of all women* sent to AZ prisons in 2018 were locked up just for methamphetamine possession. (6/12)

This consequences of trend don’t just affect the women in prison. Half of all women in AZ prisons report having dependents. Many are primary caretakers or breadwinners, and their absence can destabilize entire families and communities. (7/12) …e2xojr925ehv6-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/upl…

At the same time, incarcerated women are often vulnerable themselves. They’re more likely than men to report suffering from substance abuse and mental health issues. The vast majority also report having endured past physical and sexual abuse (8/12). bja.gov/publications/w…

AZ prisons are unsafe for everyone, but conditions are especially harsh for women, who have been denied basic hygienic supplies despite the Dept of Corrections’ billion dollar budget. (9/12) npr.org/2018/10/12/656…

10 years ago this month, these horrific conditions cost Marcia Powell her life at Perryville prison. Powell was placed in an outdoor cage for hours on end, despite 107° temperatures. She eventually succumbed to the sun and heat. (10/12) phoenixnewtimes.com/news/marcia-po…

In her letter from inside Perryville, the unnamed author writes that little has changed in the decade since Powell’s death. The staff still fails “to recognize that those of us living in prisons are human beings,” she says. (11/12)

Because of that, the women of Perryville are still “in danger of dying in a cage,” or “from injuries and diseases that go undiagnosed and untreated due to the substandard medical care,” she writes.

“A prison sentence should not be a death sentence.” (12/12)