Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

In response to the state's crowded prison system and last year's U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce the population by 33,000 inmates before June 2013, California enacted a program called "realignment." Realignment allows people convicted of non-serious and nonviolent offenses to serve their time in county jails instead of state prisons. They'll also be supervised by local probation departments instead of the state's parole agency upon release. However, this shift doesn't bode well for people in women's prisons:

Major reforms to the state's criminal justice system are emptying out California's women's institutions at an even quicker pace than its men's facilities, because most state inmates now serve their sentences in county jails.

The shrinking state prison population means more flexibility for the remaining inmates, and more access to the handful of successful vocational programs this facility still offers, including a cosmetology school, a dental lab and a flag-making factory.

But the drastic changes also raise questions.

Advocates wonder what services will be available to the thousands of women who will now serve their time in county jails and be under the supervision of local probation departments. Inmates want to know whether the state will ever restore the educational, vocational and substance-abuse programs it cut from prisons in recent years.

And with state officials planning to close at least one women's institution because of the shrinking population, others are worried that crowding and violence will return to the women's prison system.

The result is an uncertain future for California's female offenders, about half of whom are incarcerated for property, drug and other nonviolent crimes. By contrast, just 28 percent of male offenders are serving time in prison for those same types of crimes, according to state officials.

"We need help," said inmate Sheri Crum, a methamphetamine addict from San Diego County who has been in and out of prison for 16 years. Over that time, she said, the state curtailed opportunities for earning a high school diploma, seeking drug treatment or learning a trade behind bars.

"More time in here won't help," she said. "If you want to help people, we need rehabilitation. Right now, we are sitting idle, doing nothing with our lives. I have never been offered (a substance abuse) program, not once.

"Then I go out on parole and have no resources. ... I try to make the best living I can with my record, but I'm tempted to do what I know."

and, sadly but not surprisingly, placing people in community-based programs seems to not be on the table:

Many advocates are worried there won't be enough services available to the growing number of female offenders staying in or coming back to local communities.

San Francisco Probation Chief Wendy Still and state Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, have been working to persuade state officials not to close two successful programs that allow female prisoners to serve their sentences at treatment facilities where their young children can stay with them.

The programs, Hancock said, cost taxpayers a fraction of the nearly $50,000 a year it takes to house each inmate in prison, and are far more effective.

Prior to realignment, 75 percent of women in California prisons were mothers, according to the state - but Gov. Jerry Brown's administration has proposed ending funding after June 30 for Family Foundations and the Community Prisoner Mother Program, which both offer live-in rehab and other help for inmates with children. The administration argues that because of realignment, there are not enough eligible mothers in state custody to justify maintaining the facilities.

"What should happen is that the criteria should be expanded," Still said. "These are wonderful, wraparound service programs - they are everything realignment is encouraging."

Hancock said that while jail space is a crucial concern for counties, "there ought to be equal concern over whether there will be community-based programs" that have been proven to reduce recidivism.

"The key to everything in realignment is whether we get the treatment and programs that are needed," she said. "We know that alternatives to incarceration work, we know that programs like this work - the data shows they have half the recidivism rates. The question now is whether (the state) will continue them, and for the low-level offenders, will the counties pick up the mantle and do it."

Across the country, in Massachusetts, 64 additional cells are being added to the Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center. As Lois Ahrens, Director of the Real Cost of Prisons Project points out, "64 cells mean 128 more women. The jail now has 120 cells and 175 women prisoners. Since it opened the jail has never been full. The jail was built to cage 240 women." In addition, she notes that "more than 50 women at any given time are there because they cannot make bail....also known as "pre-trial"....that is convicted of nothing except being poor."