The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

When [employers] hear you've been incarcerated, they automatically think you're a cheat, a liar, a thief, a burglar, so they don't want to give you the opportunity said Sharon White, who completed a 13-year sentence at the Bedford Correctional Facility in upstate New York last November. You hear Governor Pataki and them say, "Oh, we're getting rid of the criminals and we're cleaning up these streets." But what about the ones that are coming home? What about the ones that are going to do the right thing and who aren't given a chance?'

White is not alone. She and other women at a recent conference at Long Island University said they face many challenges, particularly blatant discrimination, as they try to reintegrate into society. The most necessary things in life are now obstacles they continually try to overcome: obtaining an education, a job and housing. The question tens of thousands of these women ask is how they can get these things after paying their debt to a society that then bars them from such services as public housing. Most female ex-offenders return to the same neighborhoods that helped them get into trouble in the first place.

Yolanda Johnson-Peterkin, the Women's Prison Association (WPA) program director of reentry services, who 16 years ago completed 21 months of a two-and-a-half-to-five-year sentence for selling $10 worth of crack, recalls that when she was released, she couldn't immediately move in with her mother and son. She had to live with her sister in the same neighborhood in which she'd sold drugs. 'There was no support and no big programs to help,' she said.

What sets the plight of formerly incarcerated women apart from men is they must navigate around the tangles of the legal and foster care system, or relatives, to get their children back, regain their parental rights and get to know their kids all over again " in some cases, as adults. I had to deal with meeting my children on their terms," said Tina Reynolds, an ex-offender, who co-founded WORTH (Women on the Rise Telling Herstory), an association of women who have been affected by the criminal justice system. "It wasn't like me coming back and saying, I'm the mom, listen to me. I had to deal with them not wanting to talk to me, being angry at me and not even wanting to be in the same space with me."

Reynolds lost one of her children due to a law passed in 1997 called the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) that allows states to begin proceedings to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for more than 15 months. The average sentence for a woman who commits a nonviolent crime is 19 months.

Peggy Arroyo, senior director of Alternative to Incarceration and Family Services programs at the Fortune Society, said that a woman imprisoned is more damaging to the family fabric than a man.
When you incarcerate a man, you incarcerate a man, she said. But when you incarcerate a woman, you incarcerate the whole family.
The stigma of being convicted is difficult for women since, traditionally, men dominate the prison rolls.

Women are incarcerated in prisons that were designed for men, Arroyo said. "Our needs are different. Men could deal with isolation, but women - we feel, we communicate. A man - you can lock him up and he can stay by himself," she explained.

And with a huge crop of women being released - 70,000 annually since 2001, according to the WPA - many have to rely on shelters and be legally barred from jobs that come with healthcare.
Female ex-offenders don't qualify for Pell Grants, the primary source of education funding for prison-based education until the passage of the 1993 Crime Bill.

"These women return to our community hurt, angry and full of resentment," Johnson-Peterkin said. "We're the community. We should provide a system to help them integrate into society."

White agrees. Though she received her college degree at Bedford and is now a case manager at Exodus Transitional Community for Formerly Incarcerated Men and Women in East Harlem, she said, "My issue when I got out was straight employment."

Sixty percent of female ex-prisoners are unemployed, according to the WPA. Statistically, for every woman in prison with a college degree, there are 32 without, and of the 78 percent of formerly incarcerated women without a high school diploma, 16 percent will receive a GED while in prison.

However, some organizations are addressing these problems by educating the masses. "A lot of employers have their own biases, and a lot of times don't want to take the risk," said Roberta Meyers-Peeples, co-director of the Washington, DC-based Legal Action Centers National HIRE (Helping Individuals with Criminal Records Reenter Through Employment) Network. "We're responsible for educating employers to get them to understand that people who have criminal records are people, too."

Meyers-Peeples added, "There is no one walking this earth who hasn't made a mistake," She travels across the U.S. educating employers and advocating for former inmates, to get policies changed regarding employment.
Shamicka Frantz can attest to making mistakes. A self-proclaimed former career criminal, the 28-year-old has been working hard to regain a sense of normalcy in her life after growing a rap sheet too long to recount.
"Now I look at my rap sheet, I realize I was young, dumb and thought I would be able to get over, and now I'm struggling to battle my rights over things I did as a kid," she said. "It's so hard."

Meyers-Peeples said indeed it is hard, since it is the law in New York State that a person's criminal record is never sealable. People are stigmatized for the rest of their lives [here], she said. Just getting arrested without conviction can affect a person long-term, Meyers-Peeples pointed out.
Imagine having to explain every time you sit down in front of an employer and they do a background check and receive that information, Meyers-Peeples said.
WPA reported that if women ex-offenders are faced with joblessness and homelessness in their attempts to change their lives, the likelihood is they will turn to illegal activities again.
Often times, women don't see what it is they can attain after incarceration, said Reynolds, who has been out of prison for 12 years and values her activism work helping other women.
"Unless the woman is offered the opportunity to receive the skills [and has] the knowledge that there are services that will help her regain her life, then she will go back."