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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
A gripping and deeply-felt examination of incarcerated women's lives
With unflinching clarity, Hidden Healers cuts through the myths about incarcerated women to expose the all-too-real brutalities they face within a criminal legal system never designed for them. Backed by three decades' experience providing therapeutic programs inside prisons across the United States, trauma specialist Dr. Stephanie Covington has used her unique access to amplify the voices of the women themselves. Their stories illuminate realities most never see: that most women who get caught up in the criminal justice system have themselves been victims of harm, that the degradations of today's prisons and jails only magnify their trauma- and that incarcerated women regularly risk punishment to tend to one another's well-being in unexpected acts of kindness. Grounded in research and rich with personal narrative, Hidden Healers is a poignant and riveting look inside women's prisons and jails- and what we can do to help.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Praise Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Quote Page
Dedication Page
Acknowledgments
A Note from a Hidden Healer: It’s Time for Change
Introduction
My Time Inside: Black Mountain, North Carolina, 1987
Incarcerated Women Are Made Invisible
JUST THE FACTS
Trauma in Prison, Trauma of Prison
How Women Survive Prison
The Language We Use
The Voices in
Hidden Healers
PART ONE: Entering the System
Introduction to the Criminal Legal System for Women in the United States
It’s Not Like TV
Who Gets in “The System”?
Cash Bail and Plea Bargains
Differences between Jail and Prison
Who’s in Charge
Differences between Men’s and Women’s Prisons
Pathways to Prison: Understanding Trauma and Addiction
The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline
First Days
The Transfer to Prison
Strip Searches
The Revolving Door
Learning the Rules
PART TWO: Living Inside
Culture and Environment
Visitation
The Impact of Improved Facilities
Sexual Harassment, Assault, and the Prison Rape Elimination Act
Restrictive Housing
A Different Kind of Space
WORKING INSIDE THE CULTURE OF CORRECTIONS
Finding Your Program
Barriers to Effective Programs
Alcoholics Anonymous and Other Recovery Programs
Creating Safer Spaces Inside
Food
Low‐Quality Food at Cheaper Prices
Food as Contraband
Food as a Method for Rehabilitation
Creative Solutions
Mothering from Inside
Generational Trauma
Staying Connected to Children
When Children Visit the Prison
Pregnancy and Birth
Connecting with Children after Release
Grief and Loss
The Death of a Loved One
Developing Relationships
Creating a Sense of Family
Romantic Bonds
Mentors, Networks, and Friends
Medical and Mental Health Care
Adverse Childhood Experiences and Incarceration
Getting Care Inside
Behavior Management as Mental Health Care
Untangling the Difficulties in Medical and Mental Health Care
Aging in Custody
Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, and End‐of‐Life Care
Celebrating Special Days
Something from Nothing
Holidays Inside
Graduation Day
Just Because
REMEMBERING THOSE WHO DON’T SURVIVE
PART THREE: The Journey Home
Gate Fever
Going Up for Parole
When the Law Changes
The Work of Reentry
A Lack of Services
Meaningful Work
Healing after Incarceration
Moving along the Spiral
Spirituality
Freedom Comes in Many Forms
PART FOUR: What We Can Do
Envisioning Alternatives
Reforms Aren’t Enough
What Next?
Do One Small Thing
Why Start with Women?
Practical Actions
Further Learning
Organizations to Support
Sources
Author Biography
Book Group Discussion Questions
Also by the Author
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Praise Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Quote Page
Dedication Page
Acknowledgments
A Note from a Hidden Healer: It’s Time for Change
Begin Reading
Further Learning
Organizations to Support
Sources
Author Biography
Book Group Discussion Questions
Also by the Author
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Advance Praise for Hidden Healers
Hidden Healers cuts through the many myths associated with incarcerated women to highlight the actual battles they have to face every day within a criminal legal system never designed for them. The book is both a riveting personal account of Dr. Covington’s commitment to gender‐responsive correctional reform over the last 30 years and an amplification of the voices of women who have had to endure repeated systematic harms. The little‐known gem that Hidden Healers poignantly reveals is how often women, despite all this, come together to support one another in the day‐to‐day struggles to provide genuine hope, healing, and meaning. It will be a go‐to book in my library for many years to come.
EMILY J. SALISBURY, PHDDirector, Utah Criminal Justice CenterResearch Director, Women’s Risk Needs Assessment LabAssociate Professor of Social WorkUniversity of Utah
Women make up only about 10 percent of America’s imprisoned population, so men get most of the attention—from a prison system designed with testosterone in mind, and from those who study that system. Stephanie Covington, a psychologist and social worker, has spent three decades helping incarcerated women help one another cope with trauma. Her empathetic and readable portrayal of women’s lives in and after prison deserves a wide readership.
BILL KELLERFounding editor, The Marshall ProjectFormer columnist and editor, the New York TimesAuthor: What’s Prison For? Punishment and Rehabilitation in the Age of Mass IncarcerationSouthampton, New York
Hidden Healers is an important book because it reveals the absurdity of calling our justice system for women “just.” It is not an easy book to read because Stephanie Covington, one of our country’s wise women, is merciless in her descriptions of what it is like for a woman to be sent to jail or prison. At the same time, the reader is accompanied on this journey by incarcerated women who are the “hidden healers,” clearly demonstrating the time‐honored caregiving that women provide for each other under adverse conditions. This book should be a mandatory part of the curriculum of every law school in the country.
SANDRA L. BLOOM, MDAssociate Professor, Health Management and PolicyDornsife School of Public Health, Drexel UniversityPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
As important as her earlier works have been, the voices of the women with whom she has worked and from whom she has learned makes this her most personal and most important book. Dr. Covington writes in an informed and impassioned voice about what she has learned and the women she has learned it from, in thirty years working in prisons and jails. Hers is a voice of intelligence and compassion, pragmatism, and hopefulness, honed by the sharp edges of the reality of our prisons and jails. A must‐read for everyone interested in prisons and jails today.
MARTIN F. HORNSecretary of Corrections, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (ret.)New York City Correction Commissioner (ret.)Distinguished Lecturer, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (ret.)New York, New York
Hidden Healers documents what I have witnessed when accompanying Dr. Covington on prison visits: women feeling seen as she validates their situations, histories, and collective voices. Dr. Covington’s portrayals of the pain and isolation experienced as a result of confinement also clearly articulate the need for continued advocacy. She reminds us that advocacy work within prison does not negate or minimize abolitionist views. Rather it speaks to the duality of our obligation: continuing to work with those caught in this draconian web while dismantling oppressive systems.
SHERYL KUBIAK, PHD, MSWDean, School of Social WorkCenter for Behavioral Health and JusticeWayne State UniversityDetroit, Michigan
Dr. Stephanie Covington has yet again developed an insightful way of thinking about women and their healing journey. With clarity and care she identifies and magnifies what we often do not see. Hidden Healers celebrates individuals who generate hope and inspiration with no expectation of recognition: invisible healers who without formal training make a pivotal difference for another through a moment, a day, or years of kindness and perception. These informal and unlikely individuals know that healing begins when a woman feels worthy and supported.
ANDIE MOSSFounder and CEOThe Moss Group, Inc.Washington, DC
Hidden Healers is a gift to those of us who care about women in prison. In sharing her keen insights into the unnecessary suffering created by women’s imprisonment, Dr. Covington highlights those who bring compassion into one of our cruelest institutions. Within the context of her own experience with this world, Dr. Covington provides both the cold, hard facts of the gendered harm of imprisonment and the hope and clear guidance needed to envision alternatives. A must‐read.
BARBARA OWEN, PHDProfessor Emerita, California State University, FresnoAuthor: In the Mix: Struggle and Survival in a Women’s PrisonCo‐author: In Search of Safety: Confronting Inequality in Women’s Imprisonment
Stephanie S. Covington’s book, Hidden Healers, should be required reading for anyone interested in the realities of women in prison. This book is the real deal. As a formerly incarcerated woman who spent fifteen years in prison, I found Hidden Healers to be true to life, depicting what that system is like and how it needs to be changed. Women face so many different challenges in prison, and Stephanie Covington’s exhaustive interviews with women in the United States and throughout Europe allow their voices to bring to light the many issues women face before, during, and after prison and their recommendation for a reenvisioning of the entire system.
BEATRICE CODIANNICo‐founder of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls
Stephanie Covington’s goal is to make the invisible visible. Not only does she accomplish this, she calls for a social justice response that acknowledges that prisons are harmful and not conducive to healing. This is a must‐read for policymakers, practitioners, advocates, scholars, and all who are compelled to “do one small thing” to promote alternatives to imprisonment.
BARBARA BLOOM, PHDProfessor Emerita, Sonoma State UniversityCo‐director, Center for Gender & JusticePetaluma, California
The issues of female imprisonment are the same the world over: abuse, trauma, domestic violence, addiction, and navigating how to mother from inside concrete walls. Dr. Covington writes with authority and compassion about all of these issues in Hidden Healers. Despite the challenges laid out in her latest book, we do know what the answers are—we just need to be bold enough to take the action required.
LADY EDWINA GROSVENORFounder of Hope StreetFounder of One Small ThingLondon, England
Through compelling interviews with women who have lived experience, Dr. Stephanie Covington has given us a glimpse between the bars of the American criminal legal system. Her interviews with justice‐impacted women amplify the voices of the silenced and show how women use their relationships with each other to create resiliency, build on their strengths, and triumph against all odds.
ASHLEY BAUMANPresidentBauman Consulting GroupLoveland, Ohio
Dr. Stephanie Covington addresses women in the criminal justice system in her new book, Hidden Healers. However, what is really explored is “the criminal legal” system that evades justice at every turn. Our society continues to turn a blind eye to the reality that incarcerated women face every day and in every state. In conversation with multiple stakeholders within the prison system, Dr. Covington describes the tremendous impacts of grief, generational trauma, sexual assault, and isolation. Through searing personal anecdotes and cutting‐edge research, this book equips criminal legal system practitioners, treatment providers, and policymakers with the knowledge and impetus to address the root causes of women’s incarceration and create pathways to healing and not prison.
MIMI TARRASCHChief Program OfficerWomen In Recovery/Women’s Justice Programs, Family & Children’s ServicesTulsa, Oklahoma
Stephanie continues to be a leader in both advancing and transforming the criminal justice system—committed to highlighting and training around the areas of gender responsivity and trauma‐informed care. Her work is unparalleled in this space, and she truly is an expert we’ve all come to rely upon and be inspired by.
DOUG BONDPresident & CEOAmity FoundationLos Angeles, California
After working in the criminal legal system for over 25 years as a criminologist, I am grateful for the opportunity to continue to learn about things I claim to be an expert on. Hidden Healers is a very moving and personal account of Dr. Covington’s journey with this system and the people behind its walls. She brings attention to the realities of daily life in prison and the research that supports the recommendations for change. She debunks the stereotypes with such clarity that you cannot pretend you don’t get it! Incarcerated women become something more than subjects in these pages: they become people once more.
NENA MESSINA, PHDCriminologist, University of California, Los Angeles (ret.)President and CEOEnvisioning Justice Solutions, Inc.Simi Valley, California
Women in prison are often called forgotten offenders in a system whose practices are dominated by concerns over male inmates. Driven by fears of male violence and the possibility of escapes, prison rules make women’s experience of incarceration far worse than is necessary. In this important addition to her earlier work, Covington lets us hear the actual voices of women who have served time in prison. Her long history of working with justice‐involved women makes Hidden Healers must‐reading for those seeking to understand what this group of women needs to succeed and stay crime free.
MEDA CHESNEY‐LIND, PHDProfessor EmeritaDepartment of Women, Gender, and Sexuality StudiesUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa
This book clearly displays the years of work Dr. Covington has spent aiding incarcerated women. She shares with us another side of incarcerated women that is usually unknown. Even in prison, women have the ability to remain compassionate, empathetic, and helpful to each other in the face of their own trauma. These characteristics enable their healing in a system that often remains ignorant and unforgiving.
DAWN S. DAVISONFormer Warden and Correctional ConsultantLos Angeles, California
Hidden Healers is a brilliant and rattling study of women’s journeys into imprisonment, their stories of abuse and pathways into crime (often born of psychological trauma), their unnecessary degradation and humiliation upon arrival in prison, and their ongoing pain from the daily grind of imprisonment. Yet it is also a story of women’s survival and support for one another. Stephanie Covington captures the different ways women transform their lives against the odds and help to heal one another. The great strength of this book is that Covington tells it like it is. Compelling and incredibly moving.
LORAINE GELSTHORPE, PHDProfessor, Institute of CriminologyUniversity of Cambridge, United Kingdom
It is not enough for us to be concerned about mass incarceration and to advocate for criminal justice reform. Like creating a powerful photomosaic, Dr. Covington shares the details of women’s lives—before, during and after incarceration—so that we can really grasp the big picture of what is not working and what needs to change. Accurate, compelling, compassionate.
ANN L. JACOBSFormerly Executive DirectorJohn Jay College Institute for Justice and OpportunityWomen’s Prison AssociationNew York, New York
Read this thoughtful book and be inspired to take action to transform our broken criminal legal system. Stephanie Covington, who draws on her extensive expertise and profound experiences working with incarcerated women, is just the guide we need to begin that journey.
REBECCA EPSTEINExecutive DirectorThe Center for Gender Justice & Opportunity at Georgetown LawWashington, DC
“The US population has been taught to fear incarcerated people and to believe they ‘deserve’ any punishment that is meted upon them,” writes Stephanie Covington in her new book, Hidden Healers: The Unexpected Ways Women in Prison Help Each Other Survive. “In addition, Americans have been told that when more people are put away, the people living out in community are safer.” In this captivating book, told through the experiences of women who have been in prison or are still there, not only does Covington blast those myths to smithereens, she reveals the healing work she’s been doing in US prisons for the last 35 years. Covington provides many useful, truly useful, ways for to you to help replace this inhumane travesty of a system with an approach that truly heals.
JANE STEVENSFounder of PACEs ConnectionPublisher of ACEsTooHigh.com
Hidden Healers offers a critically important and poignant insight into the lives of women and their families—what pushes them into the justice system, their lived experience while inside, their experience transitioning out of it. What reverberates off the pages is the profound harm and cost not only to them, but to their children, communities, and society. This book issues a call to action to envision and make real a new way forward while also providing resources and discussion questions to support us in learning and doing more!
JEANNETTE PAI‐ESPINOSAPresident, National CrittentonPortland, Oregon
Dr. Stephanie Covington’s book Hidden Healers sheds light on human experiences that are often difficult to express verbally. As I reflected on my own experiences in prison, I could relate to the feelings of powerlessness expressed in the book. Reading about these experiences hit me unexpectedly hard. I hope Dr. Covington’s book catalyzes a human‐centered approach to intervention and resolution.
EL SAWYERCo‐director and producer of the film Pull of GravityCo‐founder, Media in Neighborhoods GroupPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
Hidden Healers guides the reader on a journey through the criminal legal system from sentencing through incarceration to release. But it is unlike any other book you will read about women in prison. It conveys the terror and isolation of a first night in prison, the disgust of prison food, the desperation of women trying to mother whilst in prison, the tragedy of being unable to grieve loss, the shame of giving birth under sentence, the insecurity caused by inadequate healthcare, and the emotional resilience needed to merely survive from one day to the next. For each of these challenges, there are stories of women reaching out to offer practical and emotional support and human connection in institutions designed to dehumanize. Read this book for an accessible introduction to the working of the criminal legal system, a critique of the harms it inflicts on women, and uplifting stories of women coming together to survive.
MADELINE PETRILLO, PHDSenior Lecturer in CriminologyUniversity of Greenwich, United Kingdom
Great thanks to Stephanie Covington for providing a chilling look into the traumatic lives of women in prison. Written in simple, clear language, it provides graphic detail about the tragic reality of the lives of incarcerated women. It requires an open mind, a series of deep breaths, and a willingness to jump into the black hole of justice and punishment American‐style. The author explains that most women populating our country’s prisons and jails were born into poverty, many suffered racism, and all are victims of horrific trauma having to do with their environment. Hidden Healers is a book that begs for a painstaking evaluation of our collective thinking that has allowed our “justice” systems to continue to retraumatize the women (and men) in our prisons. When we fail to scrutinize our core beliefs about what it means to do justice, we cannot reduce our incarcerated population or the crime and violence that feeds it. Hidden Healers is powerful.
ROBERT REEDExecutive Deputy Attorney General for Special InitiativesPennsylvania Attorney GeneralChair, Pennsylvania Reentry CouncilPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
Hidden Healers is an essential resource for anyone working with or advocating for incarcerated women. It explores the urgent need for change to address the carceral system’s deeply harmful impacts. It also illustrates how women connect with and support each other, formally and informally, to heal.
MARILYN VAN DIETEN, PHDSenior Advisor, Center for Effective Public PolicyProject Director, National Resource Center on Justice Involved Women
With grace, clarity, insight, wisdom and compassion, Dr. Covington shines a light on one of the darkest and most misunderstood corners of our communities. In the voices of women who have been there, she illuminates the systems that perpetuate the harms. Truths such as “all prisons are bad; some are just worse than others,” and “we should be working both to better support incarcerated people today and to dismantle and completely rethink the system for the future” bring to light the complexities of the problems we face and the question of “where do we go from here?”
LORRAINE ROBINSON, MSWFormer Executive DirectorKa Hale Ho'ala Hou No Na Wahine (the home of reawakening for women)Honolulu, Hawaii
I read Stephanie Covington’s book Hidden Healers with deep appreciation. The challenges women in prison face and the ways they survive, with the right help and through Covington’s self‐help training, is inspiring. The book is also a witness to the bitter failure of the United States’ correctional system to meet the women with humanity. Women in prisons are a hidden group. They are a minority in the very gendered correctional system and, as in my country, the data about them is also hidden. The book is both a sharp reminder of how much work is needed to reinvent the correctional system and a testimony to the strength and healing power of the incarcerated women we get to know through Covington’s insightful overview.
KRISTÍN I. PÁLSDÓTTIRCEO, The Root (Rótin) Association on Women, Alcohol, and AddictionIceland
Building on a remarkable thirty‐year career in this space, Dr. Stephanie Covington’s new and timely book brings the hidden voices of justice‐involved women to the fore, particularly significant in an era which has seen a sharp incline in their imprisonment rates globally. Exploring both the complexity and diversity of relationships formed among women in prison, Covington highlights how women survive in a flawed and dehumanizing environment that strips them bare—figuratively and literally. In stories that will be familiar to those who work on behalf of women involved in the criminal legal system and eye opening for those who do not, Covington’s accessible, truthful, and always compassionate Hidden Healers is bound to gain new allies and, most important and urgently, help advance alternative responses that heal instead of harm. No matter who you are, let’s all do “one small thing.”
MANDY WILSON, PHDAnthropologist, Research Fellow, and Justice Health Program LeadNational Drug Research InstituteCurtin University, Western Australia
Hidden Healers
The Unexpected Ways Women in Prison Help Each Other Survive
STEPHANIE S. COVINGTON
Copyright © 2024 by Stephanie S. Covington. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Covington, Stephanie, author.Title: Hidden healers : the unexpected ways women in prison help each other survive / Stephanie S. Covington, Center for Gender & Justice, Del Mar, CA.Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2024]Identifiers: LCCN 2024000267 (print) | LCCN 2024000268 (ebook) | ISBN 9781394254392 (paperback) | ISBN 9781394254415 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781394254408 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Women prisoners–United States–Psychology. | Women prisoners–United States–Social conditions. | Women–Violence against–United States. | Prison psychology–United States.Classification: LCC HV9471 .C68 2024 (print) | LCC HV9471 (ebook) | DDC 365/.430973–dc23/eng/20240201LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024000267LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024000268
Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © NatalyFox/Shutterstock, aristotoo/Getty Images
Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.
—Angela Davis
To the women still inside who are unseen and unheard
Acknowledgments
FIRST AND FOREMOST, this book would not be a reality without the women I interviewed. The willingness of formerly incarcerated women to remember and share their experiences with me was a gift and provides the heart of this book. Those who have worked in the system have also contributed their insightful stories. I am so grateful for every interviewee’s openness to this project and their support in creating Hidden Healers.
Over the years I have undertaken many writing projects. Each one has been unique and each one has benefited from a wonderful team. The Hidden Healers team continues this tradition with both new participants and some from the past. Thank you to Gina Walter at PageMill Press for excellent transcription and helpful feedback. Another new team member is Vanessa Carlisle, who played a major role in making this book a reality. She not only participated in all of the interviews, she organized each section and incorporated my years of experience. She’s been a great writing partner. Kathryn Robinson provided skillful polishing as well as enthusiasm for this project. I also want to thank those who read the various drafts and made important suggestions: Barbara Bloom, Becky Novelli, Barbara Owen, Penny Philpot, and Sharon Young. A special thank you to Michele Zousmer for the use of her photographs.
Then there are the three who have worked with me on other projects. Laura Waligorski not only manages the office with great skill, she managed to fulfill my odd requests for the minutia needed for a manuscript. Roy M. Carlisle at PageMill Press receives a major thank you from me as well—he edited my first book, published in 1988, then decades later asked me to write another. I told him there was a book I’d been thinking about for upwards of fifteen years, the project of my heart, but that I’d decided not to do it. He talked me into it, and how pleased I have been to write Hidden Healers.
And the last and most important thank you is for Penny Philpot. She has supported me and my work in so many ways for over thirty years. Each project bears her imprint.
Source: Michele Zousmer.
A Note from a Hidden Healer: It’s Time for Change
FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS, I was trapped in repeated cycles of incarceration, molestation, and degradation. Homeless when I was on the outside, relegated to a number and forced into a two‐by‐two cage when I was on the inside—I cycled through layers of trauma and pain I neither acknowledged nor understood.
Prison is not an environment conducive to healing, but for me, the opportunity to heal presented itself there. I participated in a pilot program that used A Woman’s Way through the Twelve Steps by Dr. Stephanie Covington, who had already gained a reputation within her fields of addiction and trauma and was expanding into programming for incarcerated women. Prior to Dr. Covington and her colleagues Dr. Bloom and Dr. Owen, no one working with incarcerated women talked about how trauma lived under the skin and in our DNA. That book helped me to understand my history of trauma and opened me up to cry about what I’d been through. I connected with other women who had similar experiences. I learned that when we start to share our pain with each other, we can help each other.
That is the important work that Dr. Covington offers. She gives us a chance to look both inward and outward, to accept responsibility for what was our doing and to understand the harm that came to us that was not our doing. I benefited directly from the work she did, and I would not have been able to rise above my pain without her work. I’m just one of the many sparkles from the diamond she created.
Today I am the founder and ambassador at the Time for Change Foundation. The mission of TFCF is to empower disenfranchised low‐income individuals and families by building leadership through evidence‐based programs and housing, creating self‐sufficiency, and thriving communities. Since we started in 2002, we have helped reunite 315 children from foster care with their mothers, and we have helped over 1,700 homeless women and children become self‐sufficient through our supportive housing and innovative programs.
The Time for Change Foundation is now considered the model of excellence across the globe for empowering disenfranchised families transitioning from homelessness and recidivism. Additionally, I’m the president and CEO of the Center for Housing Advancement and Motivational Projects where I train probation, parole, and other community‐based organizations to effectively implement evidence‐based programs and services … the programs and services that actually work.
I went from being homeless to building affordable housing for low‐income women. I went from breaking laws to making laws, and now I work with others to do the same. Inspired by public health, I created a social‐ecological epidemiological model coined “The Disease of Incarceration” to articulate incarceration as a public health issue—a model that was accepted by the American Public Health Association. Using this model for our programmatic services and interventions has yielded tremendous success, with great impact in the lives of the people we serve.
Fighting against “ex‐con” stereotypes has always been a challenge; I remember not getting calls back from government applications that I submitted. Today those same governments contract millions of dollars to me. Being in a position to actually help those coming from prison has been my greatest reward. I get to make helping tangible, where folks can actually receive the help they need, because we take care of the bureaucracy on the backend.
I’ve also had to push up against people who didn’t want to see formerly incarcerated folks reenter. There may be an empty lot sitting around for fifty years doing nothing but collecting trash, but the minute I have a housing project to build on it, millionaires are rolling out of bed to come fight me in a city council meeting. Systemic racism and sexism affect every level of change we are trying to make, but our fight is relentless, and we don’t stop. It’s the air that we breathe; it’s the pursuit of justice for all.
I was stunned when Dr. Covington told me her book was going to be titled Hidden Healers. Hiding isn’t something we do intentionally; it’s the result of a society that renders people like me—Black, beautiful, brilliant—invisible. We’re right here; we always have been. There are so many brilliant women who can do so much. We live, we exist, we have value, and our work matters. By holding up the experience and ideas of formerly incarcerated women, we now have programs that work, we know how to reduce recidivism, and we have solutions.
It is time for change. Our voices have been heard, our evaluations are in, and our impact is undeniable. I’m grateful for the support Dr. Covington’s work has offered over the years and for the transformation this book is a critical part of. We are the help we have been waiting on—women helping women.
Kim Carter, timeforchangefoundation.org
January 2024
Author, Waking Up to My Purpose
Featured in the film, Tell It Like a Woman
Introduction
YOU TURN YOUR FACE to the sun as you shuffle behind a woman in a bright orange jumpsuit. Your ankle chains scrape the ground. You try to match your steps with both the woman in front and the woman behind you in line. You savor the warmth in the air for a moment before you step carefully into an old van with metal seats. You are cuffed to a metal chain around your waist, attached to the woman next to you, and you do not have a seat belt. Your bench mate stares through the metal grate over the window.
You are on your way from the county jail to the prison where you will live for years. Even knowing your sentence, there is no way to know exactly how many years. You hope to earn time off, but you know there could be trouble inside that adds time or changes in the laws that affect you. You try to slide your glasses back up your nose with your forearm, lifting your cuffed hand and ducking your head, without disturbing the woman pressed into your side. They made you throw away your contact lenses. They made you throw away your street clothes. You have no personal effects coming with you to prison. Every time your mind reaches for something familiar it comes back with nothing. You focus on that moment of sunlight, that moment of warmth you felt, as the van seems to get colder and colder.
You haven’t been in a moving vehicle for over a year. The van is moving too fast. It seems too close to other cars. Every turn slams you into either a person or the window as you slide along the metal bench. Your heart races. It will be better in prison, you reassure yourself. It has to be. You want to smell green grass. You want to see the sky. You want to wear regular shoes, not the plastic slides you’ve had on for months. Prison is better than jail. Everyone told you so. But nothing about this feels better.
When the van stops, you enter a large, spare waiting room with a dozen other women. You are ordered to take off your jumpsuit and underwear and throw them into a plastic trash bin, and you stand, huddled and naked, waiting for the officers to come back. One uniformed woman officer returns and tells you all to line up with your hands on the wall and bend over, then squat and cough. You do your best to avoid looking at the women next to you. You think, At least I’m not getting searched alone somewhere. This feels humiliating, but safer.
They send you in groups to the shower. The water goes from cold to scalding, then back again. When asked for your prison number, you recite it. You receive a uniform: baggy pants and a smock made of thick, rough canvas. But here, you get closed‐toed shoes! And then you wait in a holding cell. For hours. You are hungry, but you were transferred during mealtime, so you won’t be offered food again until tomorrow. You are cold, but you’ve been issued all your clothes. You steal a few looks at women around you—some from the same van, some from other facilities. A few of them seem agitated, maybe experiencing symptoms of drug withdrawal. A few of them know each other, seem at ease, and chat like they were sitting in their own living rooms. A few, like you, are staying quiet and watchful.
After weeks of living in the reception center for your processing, it’s your turn to talk to the counselor, who has a reputation for hitting on the women he sees. His job is to assess you for physical health needs, mental health needs, and your potential for violence. His assessment determines where you are housed and whether you receive regular medical or mental health services. You don’t want to be singled out for unwanted attention, so you try to answer his questions clearly and truthfully. He seizes on a few very personal details from your file. He tries to get you to “open up.” He asks you if you think he’s handsome. You avoid a full answer. You hide your disgust.
Later on, you’ll hear from another woman that she became sexually involved with this counselor when he hit on her because she was afraid he’d place her in a more dangerous housing unit if she didn’t. You will encourage her to file a report. She won’t, because the counselor would see it, and she fears retaliation. You wonder how many women he has preyed upon without consequence.
The day you are assigned permanent housing you have butterflies in your stomach. You are going to meet someone with whom you will share unprecedented intimacies: every bodily function, every poor night’s sleep, every emotionally intense visiting day. You hope she is kind. You hope she is sober. You hope she is calm. You hope you can maintain some boundaries and also treat each other well. You carry your small plastic bag of belongings acquired during your weeks in the reception center—a pair of underwear and a ChapStick from the commissary—and wait for the officer to unlock the door to your new cell. “Hey there,” an older woman’s voice reaches you. “Your stuff goes in the locker on the left.”
As you adjust to your new situation, you begin to feel the strain of daily life in prison. You have not spoken to anyone here about why you are incarcerated, but somehow many of them know, and you feel exposed and raw. There is one male officer in particular who likes to give you extra chores and make crude remarks to you while you do them. When a woman is sick, he makes you mop it up, telling you to just keep bending over. The smell of decades‐old floor wax, bleach, and vomit makes you lightheaded and you can’t wait to shower. You have never processed the trauma that brought you here. Your body begins to show your stress: your hair thins, your skin goes patchy, you feel somehow both hungry and bloated all the time. You struggle to get through each day, measuring time by the one communal phone: two hours until you can speak to your daughter, then another twenty‐four.
You have not yet been assessed for job skills that might be useful to the prison’s internal ecosystem. A few experiences using the drugs available inside have not yet become a habit you have to address. You have not yet developed intractable digestive issues from the cafeteria’s food. You have not yet spent the night in tears after a visit with your daughter and your mother, who is still angry with you for putting her in this situation. For a while you suffer alone, because you have not yet found the other women living in the prison who can help you make it through your time.
In this story you are both brave and lucky. In this story, despite the pain and exhaustion of surviving daily life in prison, you will find a small circle of women you can trust. You will find them in a support group, or sitting together in the dayroom, or laughing in line for the shower, and you will feel safer when you are with them. You will find women who want you to work a program, to keep your eye on securing a release date. You will find women with whom you can share your story. With their help, you will survive, and because of their care, you will begin to heal.
Ask yourself: What do you know about women in prison? There are plenty of myths and stereotypes, sensational media portrayals, and insensitive jokes, but what do you really know? Prisons belong to us, like schools, hospitals, and other public services. We are responsible for what happens in them. Yet unless you have been there, or been close to someone who has, it is likely you know very little about women in prison.
This lack of information is a problem. It contributes to widespread injustice and fractured communities. It is time for us living on the outside to understand more about what happens inside women’s prisons and how women survive the brutal experience of incarceration. Is it easy to read about? No. Many of the scenarios you will encounter throughout this book are horrific and will be triggering for some. But I believe that for those who can, exposing oneself to the realities of our criminal legal system is critical. It is important to examine our own beliefs and assumptions about how the criminal legal system works, who is incarcerated, and what happens while they are inside.
It is one thing to suspect our current system isn’t working in the abstract. It is another to encounter stories directly from women who have lived through it. We cannot change something we are unaware of. This is true in our personal lives and equally true for social issues. Each of the women I interviewed for this discussion has had a unique path, but they all agree that the way we do “justice” in this country is unconscionable. As a result of hearing more of their stories, I hope you will be motivated to take practical action and join us in making change.
My Time Inside: Black Mountain, North Carolina, 1987
Over thirty‐five years ago, I talked my way into a three‐day prison stay in the Black Mountain Correctional Center for Women, a (now closed) minimum‐security facility in North Carolina.
This is a view of the yard at the former Black Mountain Correctional Center for Women with housing on the left and the administration building on right.
Source: North Carolina Department of Public Safety.
I wasn’t being held there against my will, like everyone else. I was there to observe and to learn. As a social worker, a psychologist, and especially as a trauma and addiction specialist, I was there to confront the pervasive silence, the cultural void, which keeps most of us from knowing how incarcerated women lived. I wanted to understand how it was that I knew nothing about women in prison. I wanted to address their invisibility in my professional and personal life. Freedom was deeply important to me, and I felt compelled to understand what it was like to live without it.
At the time, I was seeing clients in private practice, speaking at conferences, and providing consultation to women’s treatment programs. I had been in recovery and sober for almost ten years, during which time I divorced my husband, embraced my identity as a lesbian, and earned a doctorate degree in psychology. In the year before my stay at Black Mountain, I was speaking at one of very few conferences on addiction where women’s issues were centered, advocating for gender‐responsive programming for women in the community. I saw an attendee with a different name tag than the rest: it said warden. I introduced myself.
The warden told me she worked at the nearby women’s prison in Black Mountain. She also told me she was bringing six honorees from the prison where she worked to my talk that evening. That night, standing among that group of women, all I could think was, Why are you in there and I’m out here? It was a huge realization of my privilege.
