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The jury returned a verdict of guilty on one count of capital murder. Prior to rendering a
verdict, jurors expressed concerns about Mrs. Colbey being subject to the death penalty, so
the State agreed not to pursue an execution if she was found guilty. This concession yielded
an immediate conviction. The trial court sentenced Mrs. Colbey to life imprisonment without
the possibility of parole, and a short while later she found herself shackled in a prison van
heading to the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.
Built in the 1940 s, Tutwiler Prison is situated in Wetumpka, Alabama. Named after a
woman who promoted the education of prisoners and championed humane conditions of
confinement, Tutwiler has become an overcrowded, dangerous nightmare for the women
trapped there. Courts have repeatedly found the prison unconstitutionally overcrowded, with
almost twice the number of women incarcerated as it was designed to hold. In the United
States, the number of women sent to prison increased 646 percent between 1980 and 2010 , a
rate of increase 1. 5 times higher than the rate for men. With close to two hundred thousand
women in jails and prisons in America and over a million women under the supervision or
control of the criminal justice system, the incarceration of women has reached record levels.
At Tutwiler, women are crammed into dormitories and improvised living spaces. Marsha
was shocked by the overcrowding. As the only state prison for women, Tutwiler has no way
to meaningfully classify and assign women to appropriate dorms. Women battling serious
mental illness or severe emotional problems are thrown in with other women, making dorm
life chaotic and stressful for everyone. Marsha could never quite get used to hearing women
screaming and hollering inexplicably throughout the night in a crowded dorm.
Most incarcerated women—nearly two-thirds—are in prison for nonviolent, low-level drug
crimes or property crimes. Drug laws in particular have had a huge impact on the number of
women sent to prison. “Three strikes” laws have also played a considerable role. I started
challenging conditions of confinement at Tutwiler in the mid- 1980 s as a young attorney with
the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee. At the time, I was shocked to find women in
prison for such minor offenses. One of the first incarcerated women I ever met was a young
mother who was serving a long prison sentence for writing checks to buy her three young
children Christmas gifts without sufficient funds in her account. Like a character in a Victor
Hugo novel, she tearfully explained her heartbreaking tale to me. I couldn’t accept the truth
of what she was saying until I checked her file and discovered that she had, in fact, been
convicted and sentenced to over ten years in prison for writing five checks, including three to
Toys “R” Us. None of the checks was for more than $ 150. She was not unique. Thousands of
women have been sentenced to lengthy terms in prison for writing bad checks or for minor
property crimes that trigger mandatory minimum sentences.
The collateral consequences of incarcerating women are significant. Approximately 75 to
80 percent of incarcerated women are mothers with minor children. Nearly 65 percent had
minor children living with them at the time of their arrest—children who have become more
vulnerable and at-risk as a result of their mother’s incarceration and will remain so for the
rest of their lives, even after their mothers come home. In 1996 , Congress passed welfare
reform legislation that gratuitously included a provision that authorized states to ban people
with drug convictions from public benefits and welfare. The population most affected by this
misguided law is formerly incarcerated women with children, most of whom were imprisoned
for drug crimes. These women and their children can no longer live in public housing, receive