She looks the same, but she says she’s not the Clare Hanrahan she was before she became inmate number 90285-020 at the Alderson Federal Prison in Alderson, W.V. Anyone who hears her story will understand why, as I did when she spoke to the Haywood Peace Fellowship in May.

This first federal prison for women was established in 1923 as the result of visionary work by women in 21 national organizations such as The American
Association of University Women, The League of Women Voters, The Womens Christian Temperance Union, The DAR, The Republican National Committee, and the American Federation of Teachers. Until then, women and men were incarcerated together with male guards and staff. Consequently, incarcerated women suffered many kinds of abuse. These visionaries believed that women prisoners who are treated with dignity and self-respect and given opportunities for education and learning skills could earn a living and care for themselves and their families after prison.

Since 1930, when the Alderson prison came under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, it has gradually evolved into a military model of administration where male needs, programs, and staff set the standard for an all-woman prison. Where the original concept of its founders included homelike cottages and a communal mode of self-governance, the current pattern of intimidation and humiliation feeds a power and control model that robs inmates of self-worth and human dignity.

Prison uniforms for these women are ill-fitting men’s military khaki shirts and slacks, and even men’s thermal underwear in cold weather. Male guards can order pat-down searches at any time in any place for any reason, or none at all. The women are housed in concrete warehouses with concrete cells that have no doors, half walls, open showers and toilets, and no privacy or refuge from male guards who can enter at will. Failure to adhere to petty and demeaning rules, failure to produce a urine sample in the middle of the night, failure to submit to strip searches when ordered, indeed, any infraction that is considered a violation of good order brings a threat of shackles and immediate removal to a higher security prison anywhere in the country.

What was Clare Hanrahan doing in such a place? In November 2000 she crossed an arbitrary line onto the “campus” of the School of the Americas, recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation because of its odious reputation as a training ground for Latin American military officers in effective methods of torture and elimination of pro-democracy dissidents in their own countries. This nonviolent protest against SOA has been an annual affair for about a decade, drawing thousands of concerned citizens of all faiths and from every part of this country to say that we must not be in the business of teaching soldiers how to kill and torture their own people.

Clare Hanrahan, an Asheville writer, was one of 26 persons arrested that day and convicted of “trespass,” a misdemeanor offense against good order, by stepping on the property of what some call the “School of the Assassins.” Because this was not the first time that she had dared to cross that line, she was given the maximum sentence of six months and fined $500.

She entered Alderson Prison on July 17, 2001, and found herself one of nearly 900 women, 80 per cent of whom are victims of the draconian mandatory minimum sentence laws of our “War on Drugs.” These women range in age from 18 to 80; mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers are among them. They are Muslims and Christians, Buddhists and pagans, gay and straight, pregnant and dying. Some come from foreign countries; some have a university education, while some have no formal schooling at all. Most of these women are nonviolent first offenders, caught in the wide net of “conspiracy,” meaning that they were related in some way to a person actually involved in drugs, and thereby sentenced to five, 10, 20 years or more.

Clare had joined the more than 2 million persons currently incarcerated in the criminal justice system in this country. Even with minimum healthcare, poor food, skimpy clothing, meager educational opportunities and concrete half-walls, the women at Alderson are costing the federal government more than $22,000 per person per year, money that might be better spent on job training, education, health care, and housing.

Alderson is a work camp where captive women are paid as little as 4 cents an hour to cook, clean, and sew army jackets in an atmosphere of degradation and punitive treatment. In spite of this, Clare says that there were times when she and these women shared their journey with laughter, compassion, and love; often unspoken but always felt. Their keepers could not diminish that.

Clare Hanrahan is a peacemaker. She has been to a place of suffering and darkness. She has listened to the stories of her fellow captives, looked into their faces and connected with their hearts, and she will never be the same. Nor will any who hear her story.

Betty Sisk Swain,
Haywood Peace Fellowship