Women’s imprisonment increasingly echoes slavery, colonization, and genocide.

Evidence

Even though this may have been a publicity stunt designed to bolster the fame of Sheriff Arpaio, the fact that this women’s chain gang emerged against the backdrop of a generalized increase in the repression inflicted on women prisoners is certainly cause for alarm. Women’s prisons throughout the country increasingly include sections known as security housing units. The regimes of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation in the security housing unit (SHU) in these sections within women’s prisons are smaller versions of the rapidly proliferating super-maximum security prisons. Since the population of women in prison now consists of a majority of women of color, the historical resonances of slavery, colonization, and genocide should not be missed in these images of women in chains and shackles. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 207

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s recurring analogy between prison and slavery, and to Davis’s broader argument that imprisonment reproduces racialized historical repression. — connects to: Floggings of enslaved women fused racial and anti-female violence — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 117; Black women under slavery were doubly enslaved by race and sex — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 26; Post-slavery prisons reabsorbed emancipated black labor through the convict lease system — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 253 (+3 more)
• SEED: A piece on how ‘equal opportunity incarceration’ rhetoric neutralizes the racial meaning of chains-wearing women prisoners could make a strong op-ed.

Broader Connections

• Post-slavery prisons reabsorbed emancipated black labor through the convict lease system #exemplifies (0.70) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 253
• Floggings of enslaved women fused racial and anti-female violence #exemplifies (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 117
• Black women under slavery were doubly enslaved by race and sex #exemplifies (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 26
• Immigrant detention extends the prison industrial complex’s racial and gendered reach #expands (0.60) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 292
• Rape of enslaved black women devalued black womanhood beyond slavery’s end. #exemplifies (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 166