Good Intentions, Disappointing Results: A History of the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women

Good Intentions, Disappointing Results: A History of the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women THE FISCAL CRISES AFFLICTING THE STATE GOVERNMENT OF ALABAMA in recent years have been felt particularly hard in the state’s prison system .1 Faced with serious overcrowding of inmates and a lack of staff at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, located in Wetumpka in Elmore County in the middle of the state just north of Montgomery, the state began shipping female convicts to private prisons in Louisiana in 2003.2 Four years later, the Alabama Department of Corrections was able to bring back all of these women, thanks to the renovation of a second, smaller women’s prison, the Montgomery Women’s Facility.3 While overcrowding, understaffing, and underfunding are not unique to Tutwiler or the male prisons of Alabama, they are problems and issues that have helped determine the history of the Julia Tutwiler Prison. Since the incarceration rate of women is now increasing faster than that of men in the national prison population, an examination and analysis of the history of the women’s prison of T I M D O D G E Tim Dodge is a Reference Librarian and Subject Specialist in History and Political Science at the Ralph Brown Draughon Library, Auburn University. He would like to thank the Alabama Review editors and manuscript referees for making suggestions that significantly improved this article. 1 Mike Cason, “State Budget Gap Widens,” Montgomery Advertiser, December 5, 2002; Mike Sherman, “Prison Bill Gets Final Approval,” Montgomery Advertiser, April 2, 2003; Mike Sherman, “Riley Approves Cash for Prison Bailout,” Montgomery Advertiser, April 10, 2003; Jannell McGrew, “Overflowing Prisons Await Plan of Action,” Montgomery Advertiser, February 1, 2005. 2 Bob Johnson, “Panel OKs Funds for Tutwiler,” Montgomery Advertiser, March 6, 2003; Mike Cason, “Judge: Inmate Transfers Likely,” Montgomery Advertiser, March 7, 2003. 3 Rick Harmon, “State Makes Room for 1300 Returning Inmates,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 15, 2007; Brian Corbett, “Female Inmates Return to Alabama,” Corrections News, December 2007, 1, 3, available online at http://www.doc.alabama.gov/newsletters/Dec07.pdf. T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 244 Alabama can help us understand the current situation and see how Alabama fits into the national picture.4 In many ways the history of Tutwiler Prison can be described as an almost constant struggle to fulfill the ideal of rehabilitating inmates in the face of frequent fiscal crisis, neglect, and lingering patriarchal attitudes concerning appropriate standards of female behavior. In its sixty-odd years of existence, Tutwiler appears to have been a typical American custodial prison for women despite various attempts to make it a rehabilitative institution. Estelle Freedman, among others, says that prison discipline in America has traditionally been employed to make female offenders fit the domestic stereotype of women, and that rehabilitation means molding offenders into the desirable model of middle-class white women.5 Considering that the majority of Tutwiler’s inmates has been lower-class African American women, it may not be surprising that the mission of rehabilitation has been fraught with difficulties. There is some evidence that Tutwiler has begun to move away from this profile. The typical inmate of Tutwiler has changed over time, as a study of factors such as race, socioeconomic status, and patterns of crime shows. This typical inmate has become better educated, less violent, and more involved with drugs, and the racial balance at Tutwiler, while still disproportionately black, has changed significantly . What does this say about the criminal justice system and race? What does the inmate experience at the prison tell us about the struggle between the rehabilitative ideal and the custodial reality of limited financial resources and opportunities for women? In recent decades, historians have identified several themes illustrating the differences between the male and female experience in 4 In 1970 there were 5,600 women in prison in the United States; in 1996 there were 75,000 according to Joycelyn M. Pollock-Byrne, Women, Prison, & Crime (Pacific Grove, Calif., 1990), 2. In 2004 there were 96,125 according to Table 337, “Federal and State Prisoners by...