As I continue my time at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility (CCCF) on false charges, I am accumulating evidence that the State of Oregon is prejudiced against women. In both jail and prison we are told to wear clothing that is designed to humiliate us and we are punished if we refuse or don’t wear our clothes “properly”.
In Washington County Jail (where I was held without bail for almost 2 years before trial) the uniform literally looked like a clown suit, complete with orange shoes that were too big for us because “they only come in whole sizes.” The top was bright orange with short sleeves, while the bottoms were green and white striped with absolutely no shape. Keep in mind that they always kept the air conditioning on even in winter and if we wanted long sleeves we had to pay $20 at the commissary. I personally lost 30 pounds from 120 pounds, so it was quite necessary for me, and I was not the only very thin woman there. They would often take sweatshirts away from us as punishment or just because they felt like it.
In CCCF we are forced to wear men’s clothes that don’t fit us properly. We feel gender dysmorphia because of this. It is especially humiliating for a man who identifies as a woman or for men who have had an operation to become a woman.
In both jail and prison they invent and enforce petty rules to abuse us. There is a woman here who was sent to isolation, with loss of privileges for a month for expressing herself with her uniform. Another woman here was given the same punishment for false charges. Acts like these infringe on our rights as women. We wager that these things would not be happening in a men’s prison. They take advantage of the fact that we are women by punishing us more because they are banking on us not pushing back. The whole thing is set up like an abusive relationship, especially since there is no self-defense law here in Oregon. There are countless women in this prison who have fought back after years of being in an abusive marriage or relationship. We are often treated as second class citizens and as if we do not matter. This has been especially true during COVID, where we have all been exposed and even punished for things that are out of our control. They have gotten away with abusing women here for so long it is time we all stood up for our rights and put a stop to being exploited for profit here. We have even had sexual assaults swept under the rug here.
President Biden has proposed a law to do away with privately owned for profit detention centers, but as a person in here with false charges I feel that all detention centers are just out to make a profit. I am not the only one in with false charges either. Even the public defenders and judges are in it for the money and don’t care what is going on. They should allocate some of the money they make from us to put towards more doctors and medical care, because a lot of people here are suffering. We still see them throwing away trays of food in the kitchen, and they only serve us small portions. There are women here with no commissary money and if I try to give one of them an extra piece of cake I am punished. There is something terribly wrong with this system and I can’t believe no one is trying to do anything about it.
In addition to being forced to wear the clownish attire and the men’s clothing, we are also forced to wear clothes that are way too big for us. Personally, I am very small and I wear either extra small or a zero in clothing size. But when we check in here at the facilities the smallest size they would give me is a medium. They also give us large bright red shorts to add to the subliminal abuse we receive here … referring us to clowns once again.
The disorganized atmosphere during COVID has been especially hard on the women who have been institutionalized by spending many years incarcerated. They get a sense of security taken away when their routine is disrupted and this actually handicaps them. More empathy needs to be given to them, as their lives have been turned upside down from all the moving, isolation, and loss of time out of their cells.
We have a woman here serving a very long sentence because her ex-boyfriend downloaded child porn onto her computer without her knowledge, and she was blamed for the crimes. This brings us back to the State of Oregon being prejudiced against women. This particular lady has never been in trouble with the law and is quite successful on the outside. The fact that the man who actually committed this crime is still free to continue his crimes is highly unjust and dangerous. Also, some of the other women in the prison are judgmental to her, which is very disheartening and I pray she gets the justice she deserves during appeals, or get her charges dropped. This is also further evidence that the State is more concerned with exploiting women for money than it is with actually prosecuting the real criminals. In my case, the officer in charge of my arrest admitted on record that he thought I was someone else, yet I was still found guilty by the jury and given life sentence. I think if the general public was educated a little more on the judicial system they would be able to fulfill their moral obligation a little better. People need to realize that not everyone in prison is guilty of the crimes they are accused of and we need to do something about our broken system and laws, to minimize these injustices.
We have a man here in CCCF who has a pattern of strangling women and succeeded once that we know of. Still, he is currently up to have his case overturned. This is a prime example of the State of Oregon being prejudiced towards women, as I am in here for a life sentence with no previous criminal history, no evidence of my crime, no witnesses, no motive, and I was not even found in the area of my charged crime. The fact that this man used to be a police officer might have something to do with why he has been put in a female prison, but it does not seem right to me. He has been accepted into the “puppy” program here, yet the woman who was blamed for her ex-boyfriend’s crime of child pornography is not allowed into the puppy program. This is extremely unfair. A second look needs to be taken at things going on here at CCCF.