Women of Substance
Women of Substance
Women’s Prison Population Growing
10.44 p.m. ET
(0244 GMT) August 31, 1999
| By Tracey Middlekauff |
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This is the third of a four-part Fox News Online series “Doing Time:
Crime and Punishment in the USA.”
NEW YORK —
Johanna Dubose was first incarcerated at age 19. She stole
a sweater and did two weeks in a Rockland County, N.Y. jail.
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In the three years that followed, she was in and out of jail for minor
offenses until, in 1990, as a 23-year-old crack addict, she was arrested
for selling $80 worth of the drug. That got her 4 1/2-9 years in New York’s
Bayview Correctional Center. She served five years.
Growing Population
Women are the fastest-growing population in the nation’s prisons, according
to a 1998 Department of Justice report. From 1990-1996, there was a 65
percent increase among sentenced female prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents,
compared to a 43 percent increase among males.
The DOJ also reported that in 1997, drug offenders were the largest
source of growth in the female prison population, accounting for 45 percent
of the increase since 1990. About half the women in the nation’s correctional
systems have also been victims of physical or sexual abuse, according
to the DOJ.
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Past drug addiction is common among female prisoners |
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That was the case with Dubose. “Living with years of abuse led me to
the streets,” she says. “I’d rather been out than at home.”
Some experts see a link between a history of abuse, drugs and criminal
behavior in women. “(The women’s stories) make you understand why they
self-medicate,” says Ann Jacobs, the executive director of the Women’s
Prison Association, a New York-based nonprofit organization with many
programs for ex-offenders.
According to Dr. Stephanie Covington, an expert in substance abuse treatment
and trauma: “Men tend to externalize violence. But women more commonly
direct rage inward. They become self-abusers.” That substance abuse often
leads to criminal activity, which in turn leads to jail.
Programs Aim to Help
Koretta McClendon spent a good portion of her youth in the criminal
justice system. Her first brush with the law came at age 9, when she kidnapped
a 4-year-old girl and was caught stealing savings bonds from, of all places,
“a cop’s house.”
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Like Dubose, McClendon says she suffered terrible abuse as a child.
“You know how kids have their first memories of their parents? My first
memory is of my mother tying me to a door and beating me with an extension
cord,” she says.
McClendon says her mother supported the family by selling drugs. When
McClendon was 17, her mother turned her on to crack. “I wind up being
this 18-year-old girl who had never had sex (to) being a full-fledged
prostitute. … I lost my virginity to prostitution.”
McClendon says she grew weary of prostitution and began selling drugs.
She was arrested and eventually sentenced to 8 months at the Rose M. Singer
Center, the women’s jail at Rikers Island, N.Y., for evading a warrant
involving cocaine charges.
It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to her, she believes.
The Singer Center has dozens of programs for inmates with problems ranging
from substance abuse to living with AIDS. “We take people who have an
interest,” explains Thomas Antenen, a spokesperson for New York City’s
Department of Corrections (DOC). “People pass through our doors who would
like to get some help.”
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“A person who refused to get into themselves is a person who didn’t |
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McClendon enrolled in Singer’s STEP (Self-Taught Empowerment Program),
which helps women transition back to a life after incarceration. In STEP,
inmates are separated from the general population and taught life skills,
work skills and a sense of responsibility.
McClendon describes the program as “a military-style program, with groups,
workshops, computers, volunteers from the community.”
“For the first time in my life I had something that I could have self-esteem
about,” she says. “We had daily chores, we went to school, had daily bunk
and bed inspections. … They made sure we maintained our daily appointments
and did our chores. Mondays we heard women who had graduated from the
program. Other times we were selected from each unit to do community work.”
Dubose enrolled in a similar program at the Bayview Correctional Center,
a therapeutic treatment regimen called Staying Out. Besides separating
members from the general prison population, the program also featured
both intensified group sessions and one-on-one therapy. As she describes
it, “You had to get into yourself. A person who refused to get into themselves
is a person who didn’t want to get clean.”
Part 2: Breaking the Cycle
McClendon was released in 1994, and has been off drugs and out of jail
ever since. “Going to jail was a very devastating process for me,” she
says. “But if you asked me today do I feel terrible about the fact that
I got incarcerated — I wouldn’t change the experience for anything
in the world. It has kept me straight.”
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That wasn’t the case with Dubose.
She returned to jail at the Rose Singer Center in 1996, this time for
16 months, for the harming and endangerment of her son. She was arrested
after the boy went to a police station with an ex-babysitter to show the
police the belt mark he had on his body.
Dubose’s recidivism was not singular. Though rates are hard to track,
according to DOC spokesman Antenen, a 1994 DOJ report estimated about
71 percent of women in state prisons had been previously either on probation
or incarcerated.
“Rikers was the hardest time I’ve ever done,” Dubose says. “It was hard
because the people I saw there were people I had done time with. I was
angry with the system, with God, but mostly with myself.”
According to Dr. Covington, “The majority of women (in the criminal
justice system) have horrendous histories of abuse. … When they have
kids, there is always the risk of the abused becoming the abuser.”
Dubose says she’s conscious of this and has taken steps to learn new
behaviors. She has attended parenting classes through Parents Dynamic
and has undergone more therapy. She is also affiliated with Gethsemane
Justice Works Community, a Brooklyn-based community outreach program that
helps women and ex-offenders in the criminal justice system.
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Dubose’s affiliation with a support group like Justice Works is essential
to her continued recovery, Dr. Covington believes. The two most important
factors in the treatment of ex-offenders like Dubose are some form of
therapeutic treatment inside the correctional facility that separates
the offender from the general population, and a continuity of care once
the person is released.
McClendon and Dubose are both going back to school in the fall to study
human services. McClendon now works as a case manager and resource specialist
at the Women’s Prison Association.
“I love my job,” she enthuses. “I love the spirit of the agency. It’s
helped me so much.”
“Sometimes, people make decisions based on their conditioning,” McClendon
says. “And if you could really sit down and get to know someone and look
at them, it could be your brother, your mother, your sister, a co-worker,
a dear friend — look at the whole person, don’t just look at the
crime.”
| Tags: society