Obama for America launches new voter registration website – Gotta Vote – resources for every state.

Criminal InJustice^† is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal InJustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.

Birthing Behind Bars: Fighting for Reproductive Justice for Women in Prison
By Tina Reynolds and Victoria Law

“I never thought of advocating outside of prison. I just wanted to have some semblance of a normal life once I was released,” stated Tina Reynolds, a mother and formerly incarcerated woman. Then she gave birth to her son while in prison for a parole violation:

“When I went into labor, my water broke. The van came to pick me up, I was shackled. Once I was in the van, I was handcuffed. I was taken to the hospital. The handcuffs were taken off, but the shackles weren’t. I walked to the wheelchair that they brought over to me and I sat in the wheelchair with shackles on me. They re-handcuffed me once I was in the wheelchair and took me up to the floor where women had their children.

“When I got there, I was handcuffed with one hand. At the last minute, before I gave birth, I was unshackled so that my feet were free. Then after I gave birth to him, the shackles went back on and the handcuffs stayed on while I held my son on my chest.”

That treatment, she recalled later, was “the most egregious, dehumanizing, oppressive practice that I ever experienced while in prison.” Her experience is standard procedure for the hundreds of women who enter jail or prison while pregnant each year.

Upon her release, Reynolds started Women on the Rise Telling Her Story (WORTH), an organization of currently and formerly incarcerated women based in New York City, to give currently and formerly incarcerated women both a voice and a support system.

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From CAP:

The right to vote is under attack in states across the country. Conservative legislators are introducing and passing legislation that creates barriers to voting, including “Voter ID” bills that require voters to show specific types of photo identification at the polls. The claimed intent of these laws is to prevent fraud, but in fact there are almost no cases of voter impersonation. A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than he or she is to vote by pretending to be someone else. These laws make it harder for young people, people of color, low-income people, the disabled, and older Americans to vote.

To help better understand this wave of voter suppression efforts, [CAP] created the interactive map below. Please check it out and share with others:

From The Nation:

“Why aren’t you and your boyfriend married after almost fourteen years of being together?” I’m often asked. “Well, it seems wrong to get legally married when many of our friends can’t,” I say.

People often greet my response with an awkward silence. But, the pause is a question itself: What if heterosexual couples voluntarily refused the benefits of marriage that are denied to most of our gay and lesbian friends and family?

Last week, the issue of marriage equality roared back in the headlines when President Obama stated that he believes gay and lesbian Americans have a right to marry. While his speech was heavier on the rhetoric than the politics, it did capture a growing ideological shift amongst Americans, especially young voters, from that of antipathy to empathy to public support.

Obama’s statement is a watershed. Yet how do those of us who benefit from heterosexual privilege, yet believe in full citizenship for all Americans, push that needle of solidarity, and ultimately social change even further to the left?

From Mother Jones:

Between 1929 and 1974, North Carolina sterilized more than 7,500 of its residents. Most were operated on without their consent, having been deemed “feebleminded” and unfit to reproduce by the state Eugenics Board. Eighty-five percent were women; about 40 percent were black or Native American. As many as 2,000 victims are thought to still be alive.

Nationwide, 32 other states had eugenics programs during the 20th century, resulting in the sterilization of more than 60,000 Americans. While several states have formally apologized for this ugly chapter in their histories, North Carolina is the only one that has attempted to compensate its victims. In January, a state task force recommended that each living, verified victim be paid $50,000. Last month, Gov. Bev Perdue requested $10.3 million to cover the cost.

Elaine Riddick has been one of the most outspoken advocates for the victims of North Carolina’s eugenics project. In 1968, when she was 14, she was raped and impregnated by an older neighbor. The Eugenics Board declared her “feebleminded” and “promiscuous.” Immediately after she gave birth to her son by cesarean section, she was sterilized. Her illiterate grandmother signed the consent form with an X. “I’ve never been feebleminded,” Riddick said during a hearing last summer (PDF). “They slandered me. They ridiculed and harassed me. They cut me open like I was a hog.”

Riddick’s son, Tony also spoke at the hearing. “If you want to know why I’m so passionate about this,” he explained, “[it] is because I saw what was done to my mother. I saw the rape that was done to my mother through the state.”

From Institute for Southern Studies:

In an in-depth piece in the New Orleans Times-Picayune this weekend, writer Cindy Chang looks at one of the key driving factor behind the world’s lock-up capital: “cold, hard cash.”

In Louisiana, it’s not just big for-profit prison companies — it’s small-town entrepreneurial sheriffs who lock people up to make money:

[I]n a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations. If the inmate count dips, sheriffs bleed money. Their constituents lose jobs. The prison lobby ensures this does not happen by thwarting nearly every reform that could result in fewer people behind bars. [..] Each inmate is worth $24.39 a day in state money, and sheriffs trade them like horses, unloading a few extras on a colleague who has openings. A prison system that leased its convicts as plantation labor in the 1800s has come full circle and is again a nexus for profit.

The incentive to lock up more people is coupled harsh sentencing laws and a stingy parole system. The result is a network of players in the criminal justice system that have little interest in change:

“You have people who are so invested in maintaining the present system — not just the sheriffs, but judges, prosecutors, other people who have links to it,” said Burk Foster, a former professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and an expert on Louisiana prisons. “They don’t want to see the prison system get smaller or the number of people in custody reduced, even though the crime rate is down, because the good old boys are all linked together in the punishment network, which is good for them financially and politically.”

From The Hill:

More than 230,000 unemployed workers will lose their jobless benefits this weekend as portions of federal programs expire across several states.

All told, 409,300 long-term unemployed Americans in 27 states will have lost upward of 20 weeks of federal unemployment benefits by this past Saturday, even as the many state jobless rates remain high, according to a new analysis by the National Employment Law Project (NELP).

The latest batch of cuts affects 236,300 unemployed people in eight states — California (11%), Texas (7%) Pennsylvania (7.5%), Florida (9%), Illinois (8.8%) North Carolina (9.7%) Colorado (7.8%) and Connecticut (7.7%) — half of which have jobless rates above the 8.1 percent national average posted in April.
“A growing number of long-term unemployed workers are being left behind,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the NELP.

“Job openings are not taking the place of these cuts,” Owens said.

…

Republicans have called the continuation of extended jobless benefits a drag on the economy, arguing that they discourage the unemployed from looking for work and they are adding to the federal budget deficit.