What Happens in Women's Prisons When No One Is Watching

Women’s prisons exist for a reason.

They exist because women are physically vulnerable to men. Because many incarcerated women have histories of sexual violence. Because safety, privacy, and dignity are not abstractions inside a locked institution. They are the difference between survival and further trauma.

This archival episode of North American Angst, hosted by Peeja and Carol, confronts what happens when that foundation is quietly removed. When policy language replaces common sense. When women inside are told that speaking up will cost them parole, access to their children, or their safety altogether.

What emerges is not a debate. It is an accounting.

Voices From the Inside

This episode centers on two women whose authority comes not from theory, but from lived experience.

Heather Mason, formerly incarcerated at Grand Valley Institution for Women in Ontario, describes how women’s prisons in Canada have changed under transfer policies that allow men to be housed in female facilities. She details the reality women face inside, from locking themselves in rooms to avoid harassment, to being punished for objecting, to watching institutions that once protected women now enforce silence instead.

Amy Ichikawa brings a parallel perspective from the United States. After serving five years in a California state prison, she became a point of contact for incarcerated women when new policies began taking effect. Women reached out in fear, reporting assaults, intimidation, and retaliation. Many were too afraid to file complaints. Others did, only to watch them disappear into bureaucracy.

Across borders, the pattern is the same.

When Policy Becomes a Weapon

One of the most disturbing through-lines in this conversation is how policy language is used to suppress resistance.

Women who object are labeled discriminatory. Guards who express discomfort are disciplined or reassigned. Mothers in prison are warned that speaking up could result in losing access to their children. In Canada, women describe how even documenting concerns can negatively affect parole outcomes.

The system does not need to prove women are wrong. It only needs to make speaking too costly.

As Heather explains, many women simply endure. They avoid common spaces. They stay silent. They focus on getting out alive and seeing their children again. Silence becomes a survival strategy.

Mothers, Children, and Institutional Neglect

The episode spends significant time on mother and child units, spaces intended to allow incarcerated mothers to care for young children.

These units are not theoretical. They are real houses on prison grounds where children live full-time with their mothers.

Heather and Amy describe how male inmates have been housed near or around these units, sometimes with known histories of sexual violence against children. Mothers report being warned informally by guards to keep children close. Complaints are dismissed. Accountability is absent.

The psychological toll of raising a child in constant fear inside a prison setting is impossible to overstate.

The Guards Who Are Not Allowed to Speak

This episode also exposes the position of female correctional officers.

Many did not sign up to strip-search male inmates. Some report being forced to observe explicit sexual behavior. Others are injured by male prisoners and told to accept it as part of the job. Those who object risk discipline, reassignment, or termination.

Union protection does not equate to safety. Silence is often the only way to keep a career.

As Amy notes, encouragement often arrives privately. Messages of support come quietly, never publicly. Pensions and livelihoods hang in the balance.

Why This Must Be an Outside Fight

The women inside cannot lead this fight.

They cannot protest. They cannot organize openly. They cannot risk retaliation. Every letter is read. Every complaint is scrutinized. Every mark on their file matters.

That is why this episode matters.

It documents what institutions would rather keep invisible. It preserves testimony before it can be erased. It reminds listeners that prison walls do not make injustice disappear. They only make it harder to see.

What Comes Next

Heather outlines plans to expand advocacy across Canada, particularly by working more closely with women in Quebec whose voices are often excluded due to language barriers. Amy focuses on legal representation, fundraising for lawsuits, and maintaining contact with incarcerated women who need to know they are not alone.

Both emphasize the same truth. Public awareness changes what institutions are willing to ignore.

Bearing Witness Is an Act of Resistance

This episode of North American Angst does not ask listeners to speculate.

It asks them to listen.

To understand that women’s safety has become negotiable in spaces where it should be absolute. To recognize that incarcerated women are still women. And to accept that silence is not neutrality. It is participation.

If you want to stay connected to these conversations and receive our broadcasts directly, join Ember.

The women inside are watching.

What happens next depends on who chooses to speak.