“You couldn’t have just gone to the zoo?” an inmate hissed through the bars at 21 University students touring Tutwiler Prison for Women Friday.
The University group rode from Tuscaloosa to Wetumpka, more than 250 miles round trip, to the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women as part of the last event of the Women’s Resource Center’s week advocating awareness and support for incarcerated women in Alabama. Tutwiler is the only maximum security prison for women in the state.
The group was comprised of students majoring in criminal justice, women’s studies, political science and more. Four staff members from the WRC and one UA professor accompanied them. A few students made the trip as an optional part of a course in women’s studies, but most were interested in the conditions at the prison and gladly took the opportunity to see the facility.
“I just found out about the trip a few days ago,” Kristen Loney sophomore said. “I’ve been wanting to see Tutwiler for months, so I rearranged my entire week for the chance to tour the prison.”
Although they toured the prison as advocates of the women incarcerated there, the group was met with mixed emotions.
“Don’t forget us, okay?” one inmate asked.
Others were distant, angry or aggressive, like the woman who made the comment about the zoo.
“I felt almost guilty,” Loney said. “At times it really did feel voyeuristic, like we were looking at an exhibit.”
A pair of officers led the students on a two-hour tour of the main buildings of the prison, but time did not allow for a completely comprehensive tour.
Even so, the visit showed the group the full scope of the diversity among the incarcerated women. They visited inmates with mental health problems in one dorm and those recovering from drug addiction in another. Other specialized dorms included those for inmates who were HIV-positive, the aged and infirmed who required special medical attention, a faith-based dorm for the well-behaved and four inmates in private cells on death row.
The captain leading the tour said their youngest inmate was admitted when she was 14 on a charge of murder, and their oldest is living on oxygen in the dorm for the aged and infirmed.
She also stressed the issues of overcrowding and lack of funding at Tutwiler. She said the prison and its annex, originally designed to hold 545 prisoners, housed 963 inmates Friday, and an average of 20 officers were scheduled to work each day.
The lack of funding and the programs that have been cut as a result are the main reason that a large number of women released from Tutwiler ultimately return to its bars, according to the captain. Without programs that incite and enable the inmates to smoothly transition between incarceration and freedom, the stark contrast between the two worlds is too much for many women, she said.
“They’re spoiled,” she said. “They become so dependent on us, on our support, that the free world’s too much for them and we end up seeing them again.”
Andres Peña, a senior majoring in management and political science, said he believes inmates could have better access to schooling.
“Each course is currently $700 and inmates’ families are responsible for this fee,” said Peña, who also works at the WRC. “Also, they need activities or jobs in prison that allow the inmates to build skills they can use when re-entering the general population.”
Despite low funding and overpopulation, each woman in Tutwiler prison eats three meals a day, sleeps in her own bed and is provided Blue Cross Blue Shield health care, according to officers inside the prison.
The captain guiding the tour said each inmate receives the best treatment the world has to offer for whatever ails her. She emphasized prenatal care and cancer treatment and said no expense was spared for either.
Students in each of the three vans returning to Tuscaloosa were asked to consider their original expectations of the conditions at Tutwiler and compare them with what the tour showed.
“The living conditions at Tutwiler prison are nothing short of terrifying.” Peña said. “If employed while in prison, inmates earn only 35 cents per hour.
“The biggest surprise, however, was a comment made by a man who works in the prison while we were leaving,” he said. “When asked by a student on the trip what it’s like to be in prison there he said, ‘It’s terrible. The women that work here are worse than the women that are in here.’”
