All Songs
Walls Within The Walls
DarkJustice systems around the world claim to be equal, but a story from NPR News reveals a harsh reality in Senegal's prisons. Women behind bars don't just lose their freedom — they lose their families, their dignity, and their place in society in ways that male prisoners never do. This is "Walls Within The Walls," where we explore the double punishment that turns incarceration into complete isolation.
This song was inspired by the headline: “Why women have an especially tough time in Senegal's prisons” from NPR News.
Lyrics
Verse 1
In Thiès, Senegal, behind the iron gate
Maïmouna Diouf remembers how she'd wait
The judicial process moves so slow
Women charged with crimes have nowhere else to go
No soap, no food beyond the rationed plate
Basic supplies that never seem to come
The men get visits, but the women get none
Chorus
There are walls within the walls
Stigma heavier than stone
When your family turns away
You serve your sentence all alone
In Senegal the women pay
A price the courts don't say
There are walls within the walls
That never fall away
Verse 2
A woman convicted loses more than time
Her community erases her like she erased a line
The men hold on to bonds, to brothers, friends
But for the women, all that connection ends
No hygiene products, dignity denied
The harsher reality that hides inside
A system built for men on every side
Chorus
There are walls within the walls
Stigma heavier than stone
When your family turns away
You serve your sentence all alone
In Senegal the women pay
A price the courts don't say
There are walls within the walls
That never fall away
Verse 3
March twenty-twenty-six, the story's told
By Ricci Shryock, the truth is getting old
Familial support just stripped away
While women wait for trial day after day
Global health, they call it, look and see
The prison is a sentence plus a penalty
The world outside forgets so easily
Bridge
And who will speak for those
Whose names we'll never know
Behind the walls in Senegal
Where the silence starts to grow
It's more than bars and concrete
It's the shame they make you own
A double sentence handed down
To women left alone
Chorus
There are walls within the walls
Stigma heavier than stone
When your family turns away
You serve your sentence all alone
In Senegal the women pay
A price the courts don't say
There are walls within the walls
That never fall away
Inspired by real events. Names, details, and narrative may be fictionalized.
