The Women We Sentence and Forget

Is This Really Legal?

Host Liz Oyer and photographer Sara Bennett explore the hidden human stories of women serving life sentences in prison. Using Bennett's phot

Key takeaways

• 90% of women in the criminal justice system have experienced childhood trauma.
• Prison labor pay is extremely low, with some roles like DMV operators earning only 95 cents an hour.

Main topics

• Criminal justice reform
• Photography as advocacy

Notable quotes

I just feel like the photos say it all. I have nothing to add to the photos.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a powerful reminder that behind every criminal r

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Is it okay, like the kind of conditions that we, that we incarcerate in, that we don't pay people in prison who do all kinds of jobs, like they run the Department of Motor Vehicles in New York State, for instance. If you call the DMV, you're getting somebody who's incarcerated, who is answering the phone. Only, and that's a high paid job, they're making 95 cents an hour. Why don't we pay them properly so that when they come home from prison they can start out with something instead of being 60 years old and having a couple hundred dollars to your name? Speaker 2 (0:41) Welcome to Is This Really Legal? I'm your host, Liz Oyer. Many of you know I spent much of my career as a public defender. What I saw in that work is that criminal cases are often extraordinarily complex, not necessarily in figuring out what happened, but in figuring out why it happened and deciding the appropriate punishment. The trial of Lindsay Clancy brought a lot of public attention to how complex these cases can sometimes be. In Clancy's case, what happened was not in dispute. A mother killed her three young children. Her actions were horrific, without a doubt. What was disputed in Clancy's case is why she did those horrific things. The prosecution argued that she was just a depraved person who willfully killed her children and was guilty of murder. The defense argued that her guilt was mitigated by the fact that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. They presented evidence that Clancy loved her children, that she was a great mom, but that she became very unwell mentally after the birth of her third child. She sought help but didn't receive the help she needed. According to the defense, Clancy was experiencing what's known as command hallucinations, a voice inside her head that told her to kill her children. She then tried to kill herself and failed. The legal question in Clancy's case was whether she had the required mental state to be convicted of murder. Did she understand at the time that her conduct was wrong, and did she have the ability to control it? In Massachusetts, where Clancy was tried, the burden is on the prosecution to prove that she was criminally responsible for her actions despite her mental health issues. This is a bit different from how it works in many other places. Usually the burden is on the defense to prove that they were not criminally responsible due to mental illness. Clancy's trial lasted five weeks. Both sides presented testimony from psychiatric experts as well as Clancy's friends, family, and co-workers. The jury deliberated for seven days. There was no dispute that Clancy killed her children. There was no dispute that she committed horrific acts. But ultimately, 11 jurors believed she was not criminally responsible for her actions because of her mental state. Only one juror wanted to convict her. Because the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict, the judge was forced to declare a mistrial. The prosecution could try Clancy again. It remains to be seen whether they will choose to do so. One of the reasons I think that Clancy's trial captured so much attention is that we got to see it with our own eyes. The trial was televised, which most trials are not. That made it easier for us to see the complicated humanity of the situation. Most people who are prosecuted by the criminal justice system are faceless to the public. They are often reduced to words on a page, and the acts they committed, their crimes, are often the only thing we know about them. Every person's story is different, but every person who comes into contact with the criminal justice system has a story. Some are more sympathetic than others, and some are more complex than others. In cases of women, especially women Speaker 1 (4:05) who commit violence, the stories are often very complex. Speaker 2 (4:09) 90 % of women in the criminal justice system have experienced childhood trauma. More than 70 % of women in the criminal justice system have experienced intimate partner violence, some form of domestic violence. 66 % of women in prison have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder. And approximately 70 % have a substance use disorder. To really understand the criminal justice system, you have to hear these stories. You have to see the complex humanity of these women. My guest today has made it her life's work to tell the stories of women in prison. Sarah Bennett is a lawyer and an artist. She practiced as a public defender in New York, where she began photographing women serving life sentences in New York's state prison system. Her work has been displayed around the world. She has won a gazillion different accolades, and she now has a new book out, which I highly recommend. It's called Looking Inside. Sarah, welcome to Is This Really Legal? Speaker 1 (5:11) Hi, Liz. Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 2 (5:14) So, Sarah, your career as a photographer... began when you were working on the case of a woman named Judith Clark. Can you tell us about how you became involved in that case and how it led to your career as a photographer of women with life sentences? Speaker 1 (5:31) Yeah, in around 2008, some formerly incarcerated women I knew asked me whether I would take on Judy's case and try to get clemency from the governor of the state of New York for her. And at that point, people weren't really talking about clemency at all, at all. And I had actually done a clemency eight years earlier for a woman who had killed her abuser. So I was like the expert in New York because nobody else was doing it. And so I took on her case because she had a 75 year to life sentence, meaning she was going to serve 75 years in prison if the governor did not grant clemency to her. And I honestly don't know what prompted me to do photography. It was just a brainstorm, a really weird brainstorm, that if I could show some of the women who had been incarcerated with her and have them talk about what she meant to them, it would be a way of... bringing her off of the paper and just making her a little bit more alive. And so I did. I invited some women to my house. I took 15 portraits of women who had been incarcerated with Judy. They wrote about how she had helped them reestablish relationships with their family or get a degree or something like that. And I put it together and into a little booklet that I called Spirit on the Inside. And I sent it to a newly formed commission on reentry. And I heard back from 11 of the 50 people I sent it to, which is an incredible response, right? And they just said, like, they thought it was kind of interesting or it helped them understand something. And then I showed this little booklet to my family and friends, and everybody would look at the photos and say, she was in prison? What was she in prison for? You know, I had been a defense lawyer for 20 years almost. Like, I knew my clients as people, but... in the outside world people have a stereotype and obviously my photos were countered that stereotype and i was like oh i'm gonna start photographing women in their re-entry and see you know see where this goes believe me i wasn't i i wasn't a photographer i wasn't it took me many many years to embrace the title of photographer i was using a camera for advocacy purposes And it just, that's how it got started. Speaker 2 (8:01) Yeah, using art for advocacy purposes. As a lawyer, we're trained to make our case in words. And sometimes words are not adequate to convey the full humanity of a person. Speaker 1 (8:16) And you know what's interesting is that I really, if you had ever asked me what I am, I'd say I was a writer. That's actually really what I am as a writer. But once I started photographing, it's really hard for me to write anything anymore. I just feel like the photos say it all. I have nothing to add to the photos. Between the photos and the women's response to the photos and what they have to say, I have nothing to add to that. So the Speaker 2 (8:43) focus as a public defender is really often on telling your client's story that what you're describing resonates with me. And sometimes it can be really hard to do it in words. Often a person who is in the criminal justice system gets reduced to the offense that they committed. And some people might say, rightly, the focus is on the crime they committed. But when you are that person's lawyer and you are spending all of this time learning about their case and presenting it to the court, it is very hard. to avoid discovering that this is actually a whole person. This is a whole human being who has complex entanglements with the world, sometimes through their family, through their children, sometimes through their own personal experiences that have led them to the criminal justice system. And conveying that to a judge when you might have, you know, 15 minutes of their time can be really, really challenging. And that's what I think is so powerful about your photography is that it can tell that story sometimes really fast in a way that words can't. Very Speaker 1 (9:42) fast. And also, I mean, I don't know how it is now, but when I was an appellate lawyer, Most of my colleagues would call, when we were arguing in court, they would say appellant, defendant and appellant. It was never Ms. So-and-so, Mr. So-and-so. So everybody had a name in the system except for our clients. And just like that was so minor. And so I feel like an image is the same. Yeah, of course it is. And intentional, to refer Speaker 2 (10:09) to the defendant, is a way of reducing that person to their crime. Right, and Speaker 1 (10:15) even lawyers do that. Like, that was the way