The Sentencing Project released a report in February about the racial dynamics of women’s incarceration in the U.S. One of the main findings was that the gap between black women’s incarceration rates and white women’s shrank in the past decade. Specifically:

In 2000 black women were incarcerated in state and federal prisons at six times the rate of white women. By 2009 that ratio had declined by 53%, to 2.8:1. This shift was a result of both declining incarceration of African American women and rising incarceration of white women.

This news was greeted with some joy in certain quarters and it’s true that a declining rate of incarceration for black women is a good thing. However, it’s also true that most women who are currently locked up are black and that black women are still more likely to be incarcerated than white women. This is a cause for continued concern and renewed activism.

I thought about this report again when I heard the news of Lauryn Hill’s three-month prison sentence for tax evasion. It will come as a surprise to no one that I think imprisoning Ms. Hill is wrongheaded and actually destructive. Like most women who are incarcerated, Lauryn Hill has children. She will now have to be separated from them for several months. Some will suggest that she has the financial resources to make sure that her children are cared for in her absence. My response is that children need their primary caregiver’s presence as much as they do financial resources. Locking Lauryn Hill up will deter no one from cheating on their taxes. If we want her to be accountable for transgressing our social norms, then I can think of hundreds of other ways that don’t involve prison time. Does anyone doubt that had Miley Cyrus been convicted of tax evasion, she would have been sentenced to community service? The question is a rhetorical one.

I find it difficult to write about Lauryn Hill because I have a great deal of affection and admiration for her. I don’t know her personally but that doesn’t matter. She is familiar to me. Being born a brilliantly talented black girl in the U.S. is to be subjected to attack, abuse, and to develop a thick skin at an early age. Lauryn feels familiar to me because we are of the same generation though she is a few years younger than me. I’ve imagined what her life might have been if she had been born in a different era. Ironically, if she had been born a generation earlier, I can imagine her walking into a jail cell under completely circumstances.

Regular readers of this blog are aware of my unabashed love for Dick Gregory. Well Mr. Gregory was fortunate that he married an incredible woman named Lillian. It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman. I like to think that beside every great man is a great woman (or man). In the case of Dick Gregory, this was certainly the case.

Mrs. Gregory appeared on the cover of the Dec 23, 1965 Jet Magazine issue with five of her children under the headline “Mrs. Dick Gregory: Rebel With A Cause.” Inside the magazine, an article described her most recent stay in jail. She was frequently jailed for acts of civil disobedience like her husband. Below is an excerpt from the article:

“Mrs. Gregory had been jailed after she was found guilty of charges of obstructing traffic in downtown demonstrations against Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Schools Supt. Benjamin Willis’ alleged segregationist policies.

And, although her husband, comedian Dick Gregory, earns in excess of $5,000 weekly when he isn’t off on a picket line, or jail himself, or doing one of the countless benefit performances he is always doing for one civil rights group or another, Mrs. Gregory elected to stay in jail rather than pay a $25 fine.

“I didn’t believe what we were going was wrong,” she told JET. “Anyway, I’m tired of paying fines and there are a lot of people in the civil rights movement who are jailed and can’t make bail or pay fines. I was hoping that my stay in jail would, in addition to emphasizing a principle, lend moral support to them.”

[…]

For Mrs. Gregory, her children and husband, going to jail is old hat. During the past two years, she has been jailed five times: in Selma, Ala (1963, for ten days); Atlanta, Ga., (ten days) where she spent Christmas and New Year’s Day in the winter of 1963-64 when she was pregnant with twins, Pamela Inte and Paula Gration, one year, seven months old; and in Chicago, three times, once with daughters Lynn, 3, and Michelle, 5.”

In another time, before the era of mass incarceration and the so-called “war on drugs,” I could imagine Lauryn Hill sharing a jail cell with Lillian Gregory. I could imagine both of them as freedom fighters resisting the scourge of racism and oppression. I’ve always thought of Lauryn Hill as perhaps a “rebel without a cause.”

But today, we are left instead with the image of Hill, a mother of six, locked behind bars because racism and oppression stubbornly persist. I wonder what Mrs. Gregory thinks of all of this…