Given that private prisons are big business and States have agreements with them to ensure that the prisons remain full, it is in no way a conspiracy theory to conclude that these practices are deliberate. When they make it harder for people to do the things that we know reduce recidivism, it’s quite transparent.

So ... all women who commit certain crimes have their parental rights automatically terminated and their children go into the foster system? We can have compassion for both the victims of the crime as well as the children who didn’t choose to be born to a mother in prison.

But if you focus less on the mother and more on the child, what difference does it make? Are we so intent on punishing people to the fullest that we’ll sacrifice a baby’s well being, knowing that the detrimental effects of premature separation are long-lasting? Denying infants the ability to stay with their mothers…

There’s a op-doc film about kids visiting their mothers in prison on the NYTimes website. It is heartbreaking. One of the kids who can’t be more than 10 says something as they leave like “well I guess I’m getting used to hurting.”

Yes, it’s best for our society and for the children of these incarcerated women that they be allowed to spend the first year together in the prison nurseries. That being said, can we quit pretending that felony murderers are somehow sympathetic figures? They may not have pulled the trigger but they are responsible for…

Agree 100%. This was a great article. I’m proud to live in a state where this is an option but its not enough. There has to be the opportunity for redemption or there’s no reason to change.

Echoing this. I’d really like to know what we can do, outside of voting, to help these women (and incarcerated men, obviously).

Thank you for this well-researched and informative article! (Not sarcasm.) Beyond voting for non-assholes, I wish there were something I could do for these women.

That is insane. Do they not know that regular physical contact is considered to be essential for an individual’s mental health? I mean the whole situation seems cruel and insane, but that is just the crowning turd on the shit pile.

Well, seeing as Bertrammm’s weird tantrum has escalated to dismissing responses, I’ll reply to myself.

Dang, there is a lot of anger here.

No one deserves to be pilloried for being a defensive boor.

We can (and are) disagree on if it’s “piggybacking” or not, but calling it “bald opportunism and exploitation” is a patently bad faith reading of the complexity of Machado, as well as many others, speaking up about Diaz’s public and private behavior over the years.

so can we please just go ahead and conclude that “going off” on someone is not in the same category as forcibly kissing them, and need not be introduced as though it’s of even remotely the same class of (mis)behavior?

It’s not piggybacking. It’s expanding the context to include the fact that this guy was often (OFTEN) a huge asshole in public with women in particular. It further shows how the literary community excuses awful behavior even when it’s right in front of their faces.

I don’t think anyone’s brought this up. Getting hold of an image of Junot Díaz at the Norman Mailer Center was really inspired. Norman Mailer had quite a way with women, and it wasn’t a good one.

I don’t think she was trying to hijack anything or suggest the two acts were the same. I suspect she was simply attempting to point out that he has a history of abusive behavior - acts both large and small.

My ex was a child rape survivor and an abusive sociopath. When I found out about both at the very same moment it was confusing and horrible... The combination of the horror he went through, my deep love for him, and continued manipulation was something that took years for me to unpack. It was easy to sympathetic and…

I agree with approximately zero of this man’s policies. I thought his inflicting Sarah Palin on all of us was one of the worst political blunders of the last fifty years. I vigorously campaigned against him, and would do so still. But now that we have seen the depths of GOP hypocrisy, and the absolute vacuum of…