Hilton Says She’s Ready To Make A Difference She Can Start With the Women Behind Bars With Her

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

In a collect call to ABC’s Barbara Walter from the Los Angeles County Jail a solemn and pensive Paris Hilton claimed that she’s no longer a Bimbo and that she wants to make a difference in people’s lives. The credit for her sudden stunning activist epiphany must go to the coalition of Los Angeles civil rights leaders that publicly challenged Hilton to be an advocate for prisoner rights two days before she called Walters. There are certainly plenty of candidates for her to help at the jail. Unlike her, they are nameless, and faceless, mostly poor, and minority. But like her, many of them are female. Hilton discovered from her ordeal that thousands of women are doing time, many of them hard time, behind bars in America’s jails and prisons. According to a Justice Department report in 2004 on America’s jail population, women make up about 10 percent of the America’s inmates. There are more women than ever serving time.

They are increasingly expanding the women’s prison-industrial complex. From 1930 to 1950 five women’s prisons were built nationally. During the 1980s and 1990s dozens more prisons were built, and a growing number of them are maximum-security women’s prisons. But the prison-building splurge hasn't kept pace with the swelling number of women prisoners. Women's prisons are understaffed, overcrowded, lack recreation facilities, serve poor quality food, suffer chronic shortages of family planning counselors and services, and gynecological specialists, drug treatment and child care facilities, and transportation funds for family visits.

More women are behind bars as much because of a tough public mood toward punishment than their actual crimes. One out of three crimes committed by women are drug related. Many state and federal sentencing laws mandate minimum sentences for all drug offenders. This virtually eliminates the option of referring non-violent first time offenders to increasingly scarce, financially strapped drug treatment, counseling and education programs. Stiffer punishment for crack cocaine use also has landed more black women in prison, and for longer sentences than white women (and men).

Then there’s the feminization of poverty and racial stereotyping. More than one out of three black women jailed did not complete high school, were unemployed, or had incomes below the poverty level at the time of their arrest. More than half of them were single parents.

The quantum leap in women behind bars has had a devastating impact on families and the quality of life in many communities. Thousands of children of incarcerated women are raised by grandparents, or warehoused in foster homes and institutions. The children are frequently denied visits because the mothers are deemed unfit. This prevents mothers from developing parenting and nurturing skills and badly harms the parent-child bond. Many children of imprisoned women drift into delinquency, gangs and drug use. This perpetuates the vicious cycle of poverty, crime and violence. There are many cases where parents and even grandparents are jailed.

There is little sign that this will change. Much of the public and many politicians are deeply trapped in the damaging cycle of myths, misconceptions and panic about crime-on-the-loose women. They are loath to increase funds and programs for job and skills training, drug treatment, education, childcare and health, and parenting skills.

If Hilton became a social advocate it wouldn’t be unique. Her celebrity counterpart turned one time convict, Martha Stewart had her own epiphany after a stint in a prison in Alderson, West Virginia in 2005. In a message from prison, Stewart practically reveled in the fact that she celebrated Thanksgiving in the company of a convicted cocaine dealer. Her daily shoulder rub with other women prisoners opened her eyes wide to the gaping iniquities in the criminal justice system. She called for reforms in sentencing and a drastic improvement in the programs and services to help women and first time offenders rebuild their lives. When a glamour figure such as Stewart demands prison reform it makes news. And at least for a fleeting moment gets the attention of a yawning public to the plight of women imprisoned.

Hilton’s glitter, party going, paparazzi driven, media voyeuristic world of fortune was even more light years removed from the grim world of the many poor women that are behind bars than Stewart’s world was from theirs. But, like Stewart, that world came crashing down with her jailing, and the public disgust and rage at her for trying to worm out of punishment. Her epiphany won’t totally dab away the heavy layer of taint on her image. But if Hilton can toss some of her celebrity glare, as Stewart did, on the thousands of poor, needy females in and out of America’s jails it will be a mild boost for the prison reform battle. Then, and only then, can she really say that she made a difference.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press and Hispanic Economics New York) in English and Spanish will be out in October.