Continued incarceration of a disproportionate number of people of color will polarize American society to an irreversible extent, cautioned Ellen Barry, founding director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC), in a presentation at Myron Taylor Hall Oct. 28.

In the lecture, "From Plantations to Prisons: African American Women Prisoners in the United States," which was a part of the Dorothea S. Clarke Program on Feminist Jurisprudence, Barry said it is crucial to look at the broad implications of mass incarceration, such as its effect on family structures and communities.

"The prison system in this country is essentially the new plantation," she said. "It is the new system of slavery that functions to ... make it impossible for people who are within that system to take a normalized, functional role in society once they leave the prison."

Restrictions on housing, obtaining licenses, employment and education are just some of the obstacles facing former prisoners.

Barry, a 1998 MacArthur fellow and one of 1,000 women activists around the world nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, has led more than a dozen class action lawsuits advancing the rights of women prisoners. She has also spoken and written extensively on the issue.

"There's a way in which defining the issues around incarceration and the effects on you and your community through women enables people to hear about the issues in the way you wouldn't have heard about them before," she said, in explaining why she focuses on women prisoners.

LSPC litigates only issues that women in prison feel strongly need to be addressed, primarily medical care. "Far from being Cadillac care, this was about the worst you could find," Barry said. For example, she reported cases in which end-stage AIDS victims were deprived of nutritional supplements until they had six teeth or fewer, pregnant women were not seen regularly by an obstetrician, and Tylenol 3 was administered for metastasized breast cancer. When patients did receive care, it was often accompanied by sexual abuse.

Although some legal cases have succeeded in changing prison practices, litigation is only one tool to address the problem, Barry said. "To leave the work there is really putting the Band-Aid on the problem, rearranging the proverbial deck chairs. I think we need to bring it one step further," she said.

Barry's next step is to examine how slavery led to the modern prison-industrial complex. "It's kind of cavalier to say prisons are the new plantations. What does that actually mean?" she asked. Barry plans to document the stories of those who were enslaved or had enslaved parents to investigate this connection.

To address an issue charged with race and class, Barry acknowledged that her own life experiences have been very different from those of the people she is studying and trying to help.

"I have a very strong ethnic identity as an Irish-American and as a person who grew up in a working class environment," she said. "Embrace who you are. Figure out the positive stuff, and figure out the negative stuff, too. ... Only then will you have the freedom, the clarity, to do really good work around racial diversity issues."

Erica Rhodin '12 is a student writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.