Apologies for the late notice in posting, but I’d love to see you at our event tonight at Bluestockings, on the Lower East Side in NYC. I’ll particularly be emphasizing the rapid rise in the number of female drug war prisoners, supermax confinement, and media coverage of women’s imprisonment.
Here’s more about the event and […]

This isn’t the kind of post I would usually bring to WIMN’s Voices, but Jennifer encouraged me to do so. I want to thank her for urging me to, because I wasn’t sure that this was an appropriate fit. She assures me that it is because, after all, WIMN’s Voices include those of the female […]

I’ll admit that when it comes to television viewing in my home, electoral politics take a backseat to the glut of prison-and-jail-related television shows showing these days on countless cable stations.
There’s the longest-running, modern-day television show, COPS, which I cannot actually bring myself to watch except when they do those “bad girls” special episodes […]

Dear readers,
It’s been far too long since I’ve written anything on this awesome site. There’s a legitimate excuse: I had to finish an intensive work of investigative journalism, and I retreated to my apartment (my cave, as I began to think of it), to finish the book. Although the subject matter took a lot out […]

It might still be too early to tell, but I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of mainstream media outlets will not be sitting on Angel McClary Raich’s doorstep, reporting on the urgency of her struggle right now to stay alive.
Raich, who has an inoperable brain tumor and numerous other serious medical conditions, […]

I’ve spent a few months finding examples of some of the outrageous disparities between the length of sentences given to women convicted of non-violent crimes, versus what many men receive for offenses that result in death and serious injury.
Consider, for instance, that case of a man who dangled his girfriend out of his 23rd […]

The popularity of one of the longest-running shows on television, COPS, says a lot about how fascinated Americans continue to be with “law and order,” and the sensational aspects of what happens when people suffer from mental illness, get addicted to drugs, abuse themselves and others, and/or take out their misdirected rage (including misogyny, homophobia, […]

This is one, rare way I’m actually part of a national trend; Netflix has given me the opportunity to view a host of cable programs I wouldn’t otherwise have access to on a regular basis.
The L Word, Sopranos have been among those things I’ve been able to order straight to my mailbox … and […]

I suppose it’s an unusual way to spend New Year’s Day.
I just got off the phone with a remarkable woman doing time in the nation’s largest prison complex, located in Central California. (The two facilities: CCWF and VSPW, together, actually make up up the largest concentration of female inmates in the world.)
Beverly “Chopper” Henry […]

I was recently honored to find out that I had received a top award as a part of the first National 2006 New America Ethnic Media Awards, in the Immigrant Rights category. NAM represents what’s really going *well* in American media: the growth and wide appeal of independent, ethnic media, and I can’t tell you […]