Being in Love with a Convict Carries Stigma and Humiliation

There are very few reliable statistics surrounding women who date convicts. If there were, we’d know just how many women deal with the pain of loving someone society says you’re not supposed to, are judged for this love and are frustrated with having their relationships deemed lesser than.

This stigma arises from the same judgment heaped on the men themselves. “Why would you date him,” we ask. “You can do so much better.”

But is it fair to assume that a woman on the outside is better than a man on the inside?

I went into my first interview with Camacho with this mindset. I knew her husband was facing 10 years and I wondered why she would wait for a man like that. I could understand waiting for a man deployed to Afghanistan, but a man with a drug addiction who’d burgled his way into a 10 year bid? I believed he had no redeemable qualities that made waiting a decade worth it because of his incarceration. Essentially, I was judging their marriage before hearing about it.

I remember telling people I’d be speaking with her, giving them a run-down of her story. Every person I spoke to had the same reaction. It’s a common mindset simply because it often goes unchallenged by the rest of society. And convicts are locked away, unable to call us out for further punishing them while they already pay penance.

The media also has a hand in this. Those incarcerated tend to be young, poor minorities so it makes sense that the women waiting for them mirror these traits. Yet, the women usually portrayed are wealthier, higher status women who are white. And this is because it actually is news when a woman of that race and socioeconomic class waits a decade. Perhaps, some journalists also want to make it seem more of a universal issue that all Americans can identify with, one that pervades every culture and segment of society and not just poor minorities.  

However, by focusing on what is news, or rather what is unusual, they misrepresent the issue. So women are subject to the scorn that incarceration usually sees but also a double whammy of simple misunderstanding. In fact, these relationships are often mocked and the reality of the hardships they face is ignored.

Websites like Prison Talk allow women dating convicts an outlet.

Some women turn to the internet. Websites like Prison Talk and the Experience Project have become popular outlets for women looking to tell their story and speak with others in similar situations.

It’s time we challenge ourselves and each other for this mindset. It’s unhealthy to disregard complete sections of our society already being penalized, and it’s unhealthier to mock the women who love these men.