Empowering Women Prisoners To Move Beyond The “Doing Time” Experience

• In Event: Empowerment: The Resilience of Women in Various Crisis Situations

Abstract

Many of us who have worked with and/or conducted research with women in prison know, first hand, that many of these women crave self-respect and self-worth. They respond to people and programs that help them feel like worthwhile human beings. It is when the women themselves reach their individual threshold and decide they are ready to change the destructive patterns in their life - those they have control over - that change is possible. Among the most pressing issues confronting women in prison are access to programming for abuse treatment, drug/alcohol treatment, parenting programs, and educational and job training. We need to continue to analyze existing prison programs, meager though they may be, to assess precisely how they work or do not work, to structure our recommendations. If our efforts are to succeed, we must be adamant in showing to people in society the importance of mandating prisons to provide all prisoners with a decent education, tangible job opportunities, and hope for the future. The nation's prisons warehouse countless numbers of women who refuse to settle for passivity. It is imperative that people in and out of prison move into a renewed stage of activism to assert leadership in effecting change.

Author

• Barbara H. Zaitzow, Appalachian State University