Interviews with Offenders

Women Offenders-Our Place DC-DC Public Safety Radio

May 9, 2011 By Len 1 Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.
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Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2011/02/women-offenders-our-place-dc-dc-public-safety-radio/

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[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From our nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today’s program is going to be on women offenders, and we have two people who are true experts on the subject. We have Ashley McSwain. She is the executive director of Our Place D.C., www.ourplacedc.org, one of the most comprehensive, if not the most comprehensive women’s reentry program in the United States of America. We also have Dr. Willa Butler. Dr. Butler has been before our microphones before. She’s in charge of women’s groups for my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. We are a federal parole and probation agency here in the District of Columbia. Before starting the show, what I want to do is to do something rather unusual, and that is to promote two events. We generally do evergreen radio shows. Well, we don’t really tag events or tie events to the radio shows, but these are important coming up. February 5 on a Saturday in Washington DC, we have the Women’s Re-entry Forum, which is one of the reasons why we’re doing a radio show on women offenders, at the Temple of Praise, 700 Southern Avenue SE from 8:00 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon, February 5, this Saturday, Women’s Re-entry Forum at the Temple of Praise Church, 700 Southern Avenue SE from 8AM to 3PM, come out and join us if you like. Also, the Citywide Re-entry Assembly, which is something my organization does every year, where we bring those people involved in faith based mentoring, the successful mentors and their mentees together for a celebration of the hundreds of offenders who have been through the mentoring program. That is at the St. Luke’s Center, 4923 E Capitol Street SE from 6:30 in the evening to 9:00, come on out and join us for a wonderful evening, an exciting evening, it is something that you have to really experience. Again, the Citywide Re-entry Assembly at, this Saturday – I’m sorry, Saturday, boy, I’m screwing this up! Thursday, February 10, Thursday, February 10 from 6:30 to 9:00 in the evening, and before bringing the ladies onto the radio program, what I want to do is to go over some statistics in terms of women offenders, and these I find startling. Number one, if you take a look at male and female offenders involved in state and federal prison systems, the percentage growth for women is stronger than it is for men, so more women are coming into the prison system in terms of a percentage basis than male offenders, and we need to talk on the radio program about that a little bit today. But if you look at other federal research, whether it’s HIV, whether it’s mental health, whether it’s physical or sexual abuse, or whether it’s drug use, whether it’s family violence, it is startling as to the difference between men caught up in the criminal justice system and women caught up in the criminal justice system. Women seem to have higher percentages of HIV, mental health, astoundingly higher percentages of sexual abuse. There’s a big difference in terms of male and female offenders. That’s one of the things that we want to talk about on the radio show today, and also, in terms of physical and sexual violence, nearly 6 in 10 women in state prisons had experienced physical or sexual abuse in the past. 6 in 10 women, and 7 out of 10 women involved in the correctional systems have minor children. So, I’ve laid out the stats, I’ve laid out the upcoming events that are coming out, and now to get back to our true experts on this topic, Ashley McSwain and Dr. Willa Butler, and to Ashley and to Willa, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Willa Butler: Great, thanks.

Ashley McSwain: Hello.

Len Sipes: Willa, I’m going to start out with you. Now the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, our agency, we have a different focus now on women offenders. We’ve decided to reorganize how this agency approaches women offenders. Can you tell me a little bit about that and why we’re doing it?

Willa Butler: Yes, I’m excited about it too. What we’ve done, we’ve gone gender specific. We have three teams now under the mental health branch, two mental health teams and one general supervision team that only supervise female offenders, and the purpose of going gender specific is to answer the needs that women have. We say women are needy, but it’s not so much that they’re needy, it’s just that their needs have not been met, and over the years, the traditional counseling or any type of counseling or therapy, even treatment or supervision has been geared toward the male dominated group, which was not feasible for our female offender population, and now at this day and time, which is good that we are able to answer that, and it’s 17 critical factors of vulnerabilities that hinders women or barriers, when it comes to supervision and that type of growth, and then it’s, our groups that we have, we have our WICA, Women in Control Again, which are psychoeducational groups to address the needs that the women, and address their mental health needs and the substance abuse needs and any other type of need that they may have, because women come with a multi-facet of things that are of concern, and that’s what we’re doing today. We’re addressing these needs, and one of them, the main thing is their pathways to crime, how did they get into this situation? One thing we’ve learned how to have an understanding of, we have an understanding of how they got there. Now we need to move and have an understanding of how to get them out of that situation, and that’s what we’re working on today by having a gender responsive program.

Len Sipes: The organization is reorganizing. CSOSA, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, we’re reorganizing. We’re reorganizing around this issue of women offenders. So is it to play catch-up with the services in the past that have been given more to males in the criminal justice system? Is it a matter of catching up, or is it a matter that there seem to be more women coming into the incarcerative setting where women, on a percentage basis, there’s a huge difference between the sheer numbers of men and women going into the prison system. I don’t want to mislead the audience, by and large numbers, it’s predominantly male offenders going into the correctional settings, but the percentage of female offenders is rising. So is it that, is it playing catch-up, is that one of the reasons why we’re going through this big reorganization?

Willa Butler: Actually, it’s both, Leonard. We’re playing catch-up, not only playing catch-up, but we are designing a program to address their needs, and when we say playing catch-up, because women have always been in the criminal justice system, far back as the 17th and 18th century, but they’ve never been treated fairly. They’ve been put in dungeons, cast away. They’ve even been put in insane asylums. It’s like, we don’t know what to do, we don’t know what to do with them. It’s not like we don’t know, but it’s like, they just fail to address this. It’s like, we, we’re always looked on as being insignificant, overlooked, not recognizable, and even today, because I’m talking about 17th, 18th century, even today, you look at how women are put in the federal institutions, and they wear men’s clothes, nothing is geared towards them. But now we’re trying to respond to what the women need, and like I –

Ashley McSwain: I also think there’s a social stigma component that has –

Len Sipes: Right. This is Ashley McSwain, the executive director of Our Place DC.

Ashley McSwain: So there is a lot of shift towards women, but a lot of what plagued women offenders has been this stigma that comes with just being female, which suggests that women shouldn’t get into these kinds of troubles, and so we’re not providing the kind of services and supports, because they really, you know, they’re not the population that behaves this way, and so it makes it very difficult to go to ask for funding when society doesn’t think that, you know, there’s a problem.

Len Sipes: Now I do want to reintroduce Ashley McSwain, she’s the executive director of Our Place DC, www.ourplacedc.org, and I do want to say that Our Place is one of the most, if not the most comprehensive re-entry program in the United States of America for women offenders, coming out of the prison system. This is a one stop shop. They go into the prisons way before the offender comes out of the prison system, they make their initial contacts in prison, they extend the invitations, they will take this individual, they will provide housing, they will provide clothing, they will provide food, you have to come in and work with them and obey the rules, needless to say, but they work with individuals piece by piece by piece, rebuild them as human beings, if you will, and then get them ready to go ahead for the re-entry program, part of it successful re-entry. Ashley, your program is just amazingly comprehensive.

Ashley McSwain: Yes, it is.

Len Sipes: I understand why you do it that way, but you know, the criminal justice system is made up of a housing piece here and a drug or a substance abuse piece there, and a legal part of it to get legal assistance over there, you’ve got everything under your roof!

Ashley McSwain: Well, when you approach it as a female issue or a gender specific issue, then all of those different components have to fit within the needs of the female offender, and so that’s what Our Place has done, and so we recognize that there are other organizations that are providing legal support, but a lot of them don’t understand the experience of being a woman and being in the criminal justice system and all of the myriad of obligations that they have to meet in the same way that Our Place does, and so that’s the reason why the services are so comprehensive, so when a woman is still in custody, we can begin to provide her with some guidance and support.

Len Sipes: You know, now that we’ve done the introductions, and we’ve given a sense as to what both organizations are doing here in the District of Columbia, let’s get into a larger discussion of women offenders. They come out 7 out of 10, according to national statistics, come out, they have children in the community. The males don’t. Now that alone is just such an incredibly big bridge to cross. Not only do you have to deal with your own substance abuse, not only do you have to deal with your own issues, and a lot of these individuals have histories of being abused as children. A lot of them have histories of sexual abuse, flat out sexual abuse from young ages. Much higher than the percentages than males. The rate of substance abuse is higher, the rate of substance abuse is higher, the rate of mental health problems is higher, then they come out, and then they have to reunite with their own children. That, to me, is almost impossible. Considering the problems that we have with male offenders, and we say, 50% go back to prison in three years, that’s a national statistic, 50% don’t, by the way, but 50% do, so if that 50% are going back to the prison system, male offenders and female offenders together, throw on the obligation of taking care of your kids seems to be almost insurmountable, especially in Washington DC’s economy. Any, who wants to take a crack at that?

Willa Butler: Well, let me get back, address the reuniting with the children situation.

Len Sipes: And this is Dr. Willa Butler.

Willa Butler: That is one thing of concern, because when they come out, the main thing is, their focus is trying to be reunited with their children, and the hard part is that sometimes the children have been adopted, or they’re in foster care, they’re not, they’re going through the process of trying to get their children back, and in some instances that they really can’t get them back because of what all has, they’ve gone through while they’ve been away, while they were incarcerated –

Len Sipes: Somebody else has been mom and dad while they’re away, and in some cases, they haven’t really come into contact, direct contact with their children for years.

Willa Butler: Years, and some of them don’t know their children –

Len Sipes: That’s right.

Willa Butler: And since, and it’s kind of hard, and when we talk about the different programs being integrated, which makes it even better for the women to come out and try to work together in not only getting their kids back, but also getting themselves back together again, when you talk about an integrated treatment modality, which is feasible for addressing all of their concerns.

Len Sipes: But again, you go back to my larger question, and that is that it’s very difficult for male individuals to come out of the prison system and find work, even if their criminality is behind them, and we have people on our caseload, by the way, that have been, it’s been years since their last positive drug test. It’s been years since their crime. So they’re pretty much adhering to the rules, yet they still can’t find work. Now you have a woman offender coming out with the same set of circumstances, although she’s got kids to raise. I mean, there’s a certain point where you can [ph] pall up so many obstacles to the point where, for women offenders, it sometimes seems impossible for them to cross the bridge. Ashley?

Ashley McSwain: Well, when you start thinking about the fact that this is the experience of female offenders, and you start looking at taking a gender specific approach, those are the things that you factor and consider. Some of the women have not only their own issues to deal with, but they have the issues that come with having children, and as long as we acknowledge that that’s a part of their reentry process, then we can provide the kind of supports that they need to move forward. Prior to this dialogue, you know, people didn’t acknowledge that women coming home also had to now deal with the responsibility of taking care of their children, and so, I mean, this is a great conversation to have to begin to think about what are the interventions that are necessary to ensure that a woman does not recidivate, or that she does not fail.

Len Sipes: And the other part of it, and I have to close in a couple seconds to reintroduce you, not close, but reintroduce the two of you before we go on with the rest of the program, is that most of the individuals, because of that history of being abused and neglected, pushed around, you come out, you have substance abuse issues, a lot of the women caught up in the criminal justice system have led very hard lives. They don’t trust anybody. They don’t trust me, they don’t trust either one of you, and yet both of you put women in groups and begin to break through those barriers. That, my guess is that out of everything that we’re going to talk about that mistrust of the system, and both of you are in one way, shape, or form, part of the criminal justice system, breaking through that barrier is the hardest part. Am I right or wrong?

Ashley McSwain: Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, one of the things we try to do at our place is create a sense of community for the women. I mean, it’s called Our Place for a reason, so that the women can get some support from each other, you know, and some hope for some differences or some changes. I mean, that’s what the women are seeking.

Len Sipes: All right. Go ahead, Willa.

Willa Butler: I sort of piggyback on your name, Our Place, and that’s kind of our perspective in what we did when we put all the women in one building, and it’s like our place now. This is your home, and we’re here for you, and we try to present empathy and mutual respect and develop a type of rapport, and that relaxes them –

Len Sipes: Yeah, but we can still put it back in prison.

Willa Butler: Yeah.

Len Sipes: I mean, it’s empathy, it’s rapport, but at what point –

Willa Butler: – a little different. Right now, we’re going with trying to be firm, holding them accountable, and being firm as well, but also less confrontational. In other words, we’re trying to work within –

Len Sipes: I understand. I’m just pulling your chain.

Willa Butler: You know, work with them, and let them know that they can really, they can really do this. We’re moving more into motivating them for change and working on their recidivism and bringing it out, because it’s in them, and they just never had anybody to bring it out of them, and that’s what we’re doing today, just bringing something out of you that’s already there in a –

Len Sipes: Want to reintroduce both of our guests. Ashley McSwain, she is the executive director of Our Place DC, www.ourplacedc.org. Ladies and gentlemen, somebody out there has got some money, somebody out there has got some deep pockets, and if you’re ever looking for an organization that desperately needs financial assistance, and an organization that produces incredibly good results, reuniting mothers with their kids, taking care of the kids, taking care of the moms, moms becoming taxpayers instead of tax burdens, this is the place where you need to devote a buck or two. Our Place DC, www.ourplacedc.org. Also in front of our microphones, Dr. Willa Butler, who’s funded by the Federal Government, as I am, so we don’t need your money. Give it to Our Place. She’s in charge of women’s groups for my organization, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, www.csosa.gov. All right, ladies, back to the second half of the program. Okay, so, okay, so you finally break through that barrier, that woman gives you, and sometimes, hard as nails barrier, and you finally break through, and the woman comes into either one of your groups and sees that the other women are being taken care of, and she opens up a little bit. Once she opens up, she’s going to get involved in a history that would scare the bejeebies out of most human beings, and then you start getting into the psyche of the background of the individual, why they got involved in drugs, why they got involved in crime, why their behavior is so self-destructive, and once you’ve crossed that bridge, you have just wandered into an incredibly difficult arena, that all the problems that those individuals bring to the table in terms of their background. Am I right or wrong?

Ashley McSwain: Yeah, you’re right, I mean, but the objective is to really break it down into smaller pieces, because it can be very insurmountable when you start thinking about all of the life experiences that brought her to the moment that she’s there, so I mean, I wouldn’t recommend that we approach it from this broad, you know, place, excuse me. Right now, we really deal with what the woman needs at the moment that she’s there with us, and then we build from there, and we often find that the women come in for one thing, but through our dialogue and conversation, she begins to identify that there are other needs and that there are other areas of support that could assist her as she moves forward.

Len Sipes: Right. She comes to Our Place for legal assistance, and maybe a place to stay for a while, and suddenly, she gets involved with the other groups, and the process begins.

Ashley McSwain: That’s exactly right. Oftentimes, they’re coming for employment, and there’s just some underlying legal stuff that has to be addressed, and she doesn’t have any clothing, so there are some very foundational things that she needs, and a lot of times, the women we see, they don’t know how to ask for what it is that they want. They think that it’s safe to ask for a birth certificate, but there are so many other things that they really need that they don’t feel that they can ask for, but given the right setting, you know, they’ll begin to explore a little more about what it is that they really need.

Len Sipes: And that becomes a key issue, actually, the right setting, because a lot of people, and when I respond to emails, and comments on these programs, a lot of people are saying to themselves, look, for the love of good god, Mr. Sipes, these are criminals. What is it about the right setting? I just want you to protect me. That’s your job. Protect me, protect me, protect me. But one of the things that the research and our own experience has pointed out pretty clearly that, if you put a human being in the right setting where you hold them accountable for their actions, I mean, public safety is CSOSA’s top priority. Protecting the public is CSOSA’s top priority, but if you’re going to break through those barriers that he or she brings to us and work on the reasons why they’ve spent the last ten years in a bottle, or why they spent the last ten years snorting, or why they spent the last ten years with a needle in their arm, they have to be in the right setting. We’ve got to create an environment where they’re comfortable enough to talk about who they are and what they are.

Ashley McSwain: Yeah, the research talks about women make changes through relationships, and so, I mean, as abstract as that might seem, you have to build relationships with women in order to build trust and in order for them to become accountable for the choices that they’ve made, and that’s our objective, is to help people become aware of who they are and how their choices have affected their past and how their choices will affect their future.

Len Sipes: And the bottom line of all that, Ashley, is that it protects public safety. If the woman is dealing with her substance abuse, dealing with her own history, she’s going out and getting a job, she’s reuniting with her kids, that makes her a thousand times less likely to go out and reengage in criminal activity, which protects you and me and everybody else. So we talk about the right setting, the comfortable setting, but the flipside of that is what we’re talking about is public safety.

Ashley McSwain: That’s right, and it’s everybody’s job to provide this level of support. I mean, these women are your mothers and your sisters and your cousins, and you know, you certainly want to make sure they have the supports they need so that they can be productive, and we all can move forward.

Len Sipes: Right, and we as taxpayers don’t have to constantly shell money out. If they’re off of drugs, and they’ve got their kids, and the kids are taken care of, and they’re working, that’s exactly what everybody wants! But it’s the right setting that gets us there, and the public needs to understand that. It can’t all be hard on the offender, hard on the offender, there’s got to be a balance. Willa, when I talk to the different people involved in your group and Marcea’s group, you know, they praise you and Marcea, and they praise the group process, because for the first time in their lives, they’re dealing with issues that have bedeviled them for their entire lives. For the first time, they’re actually talking about who they are, what they are, and what they need to do to kick drugs, kick mental health issues, reunite with their kids, get a job, and it’s that group process that really does seem to bring all that out.

Willa Butler: Yeah, during our group process, first of all, we start off with the question, who am I? They have to identify who they are first. They might, whatever they were a drug out of, an offender, an ex-offender, right now, this is what, who I am, but now I’m working on some things, and a lot of times, when women in group, a lot of things, they’ve never talked about before, and they’ve repressed their feelings, they’ve repressed everything that has happened to them, and then it comes out in group, and we start talking about it, and then we start being able to not only to talk about it, but to get them help, to get them treatment, and we talk a lot about, a lot of our women are mental health. They have concurrent disorders, they have substance abuse disorders, they have mental health disorders, and we try to put them in a place where we can treat both of that, not only that, they suffer from, like I say, victimization. A lot of them have never talked about the part that they’ve been raped before, I’ve been molested a few times, I’ve been raped a couple of times –

Len Sipes: Or a lot of times –

Willa Butler: Right, or a lot of times, and all of this comes out, but yet, we’re still able to give them the help and the resources that they need.

Len Sipes: Now my favorite story about women offenders, and the real eye opener to me was when I was with when I was the director of public relations for the Maryland Department of Public Safety, which was law enforcement and corrections, and we’re training public affairs officers at a women’s minimum security prison, because they had a culinary arts program, and we could feed the different people who came for training. So I’ve got people training, and I didn’t have anything to do for two hours, so I go out in the courtyard, and I light up my cigar, and those were those days where you could actually have a cigar in prison, and the women who started coming out to the courtyard to have their cigarettes, and they know me because I was in the media a lot, and they sat down and started talking with me, and there was a two hour session in that courtyard with those women offenders, and where they took me, it was like taking me to Mars and back, because they freely talked about their lives, and one person said, Mr. Sipes, you know what? I don’t want to go home. This is the first safe place I’ve ever been in my life, and I’m getting my GED, I’m getting my culinary arts certificate, I’ve never talked about my issues before, but now this is the first place I’m talking, here’s a human being who says I find prison to be safer than the real world.

Willa Butler: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. You get three meals every day, you know where you’re going to sleep, you know, it’s unfortunate –

Len Sipes: You know you’re not going to be abused.

Ashley McSwain: Right, and that’s what I was going to say, because a lot of, the abuse started from the home, you know, and when, like I said, when women leave prison, you think it should be a happy time, but it’s like a road down perdition again, because there’s no change, and I’m going back to the same situation, a double up situation, I don’t have a place to stay, I don’t know where my children are, and if they’re there, somebody else is raising them, and –

Willa Butler: And they don’t fit in.

Ashley McSwain: Right, they don’t fit in.

Willa Butler: And you know, we’re actually doing some research on that, and one of the things we’re finding is that the women, while they’re still in custody, they’re very hopeful, and three months after they’re there in the community, that declines. I mean, it’s just, you know, the options are so limited, and that feeling of empowerment that they felt so excited about is reduced when the reality of not having housing and the options for employment, you know, they really set in, and so these women start out very hopeful.

Len Sipes: And my guess is, and we’re going to wrap the program up very quickly, so any quick responses, my guess is, if Our Place DC did not exist, and Willa, if your groups here at CSOSA did not exist, I, my guess is that there are going to be thousands, and I’m not exaggerating, thousands of women would have been, went right back to crime, right back to the criminal justice system, would have cost taxpayers tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and the two of you together, and Marcea and everybody else involved in this program, I mean, you’ve saved lives, and you’ve saved literally thousands of lives.

Willa Butler: Yes. Yes, we do. Right now, our place is really encouraging women to be literate, educated, be curious, knowledge, reading, I mean, that’s, we think that that’s also going to be part of their ability to be sustainable in the community.

Len Sipes: All right. And I just want to make the offer, I’m going to come over and wax your car, walk your dog, do whatever you need, if you get a check to Our Place DC, because the program is that worthy. Our guest today, Ashley McSwain, executive director of Our Place DC, www.ourplacedc.org, www.ourplacedc.org. Dr. Willa Butler, in charge of women’s groups here at CSOSA, www.csosa.gov. I do want to remind everybody about the upcoming events that we have on Saturday, February 5. We have the women’s re-entry forum, Temple of Praise, 700 Southern Avenue SE from 8AM to 3PM, it will be on our website, www.csosa.gov, and also on February 10, a Thursday, the Citywide Re-entry Assembly at St. Luke’s Church at 4923 E Capitol Street from 6:30 in the evening to 9:30 in the evening, to talk about successful mentors and mentees involved in our faith based program. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes, watch for us or listen for us next time when we explore another very important topic in the criminal justice system. I want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Interviews with Offenders, Interviews with Staff, Reentry, Women Offenders

Successful Offenders – “DC Public Safety”

January 13, 2011 By Len 2 Comments

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts. We now average 200,000 requests a month.

Television Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/video/2011/01/successful-offenders-%E2%80%93-dc-public-safety-television/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Video Begins]

Len Sipes: Hi, and welcome to D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. You know, every year, over 700,000 human beings are released from prison systems throughout the United States, and you’re well aware of the failures, the 50% within 3 years who are returned to the prison systems. You read about them in your newspapers, you’re exposed to them through radio and television, but the question is, what about the other 50%? The 50% who do not return back to the prison system? To talk about the successes, if you will, we have four individuals under supervision with my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency in Washington, D.C. We’re a federal parole and probation agency. We’re going to talk to four individuals currently under supervision for people who have turned the corner, who have crossed that bridge, who are now successes, who are no longer tax burdens, they are now taxpayers. And on our first segment, I want to introduce India Frazier and Tracy Marlow, and to India and to Tracy, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Tracy Marlow: Thank you, Len.

Len Sipes: All right, we’ve had a wonderful conversation before the television show, before filming this show today, about what it is, the stereotypes, when people think of the term “criminal,” “convict,” and they have this image that immediately comes to their mind in terms of what ex-offenders are. Now in the first segment, the two of you, then we’ll have a couple guys in the second segment, but that’s the issue, is it not, Tracy? That stereotype that people have of you. I was watching the other night a couple television shows, just flipping through the channel: National Geographic and A&E, and they had shows about people in prison, and the public comes away with that, saying, thinking that everybody who touches the prison system, they don’t want to hire them, they don’t want to fund programs for them, they don’t want to give them a second chance, they stereotype them. Are you that person that they stereotype?

Tracy Marlow: Yes I am. I’m one of those people that they stereotype. Society always publicizes what we have done, the bad things we have done, but nobody shows what the good things we are doing now. What I was, and what I am today is two different people. I have my own business now.

Len Sipes: You’re going for your third ice cream truck.

Tracy Marlow: My third ice cream truck.

Len Sipes: Your third ice cream truck. You’re your own business owner! You have gone from prison to owning your own businesses!

Tracy Marlow: Yes, yes.

Len Sipes: That’s amazing!

Tracy Marlow: With the help of CSOSA and some groups and other people backing me up in my life, it was not on my own that I done this. It’s not because, I’ve been turned down on jobs so many times, but one person gave me a chance on a job.

India Frazier: But when you go through your struggles in life, if anything’s ever given to you so quickly, so fast, and easy, you’re not going to appreciate it. You’re not going to hold onto it, you’re not going to build to the next step. You know what I’m saying? So you have to go through your struggles. You have to be patient. And see, that’s what you were.

Tracy Marlow: It comes in believing in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself, self-esteem is so important coming out of prison. I didn’t believe in myself. I thought what people, society say, you’re nothing, you’ve been in jail, you’re never going to be nothing. I believed that for so many years until one day, I can’t tell you when I woke up, when I woke up and knew that I was somebody, and I worked on this, and I worked on this now, I’m my own business person. I have people that work for me today, and I have to interview them now. So now, the roles have changed, and I have people that’s been locked up, and you work with money with me, because I have ice cream trucks, and I don’t want to be like the public was with me. So I have to interview these people, and I have to give them a chance, and you deal with a lot of money some days, and I say, wow, God, just give me the strength. Now I haven’t been robbed. And some ones have been good and bad, but somebody gave them a chance like they gave me.

Len Sipes: And I think that’s the point, in terms of the fact that, okay, 50% do go back, 50% don’t, but nobody ever tells the story of the 50% that don’t, and that’s what we’re going to start doing today. India, set up a little bit about your experience, if you will, please.

India Frazier: Well, my experience is, my experience came when I was, first and foremost, I asked God to change my life. Give me a direction that I needed to go into. And I set goals in my life, and then when I came home and I looked into the eyes of my grandson, it was not an option for me to go back to the streets. It was so easy, it’s so easy to fall back into that life, you know what I’m saying? And like I was telling Tracy a minute ago, you have to go through trials and tribulations and struggles to get where you need to go or get where you need to be, so I went through my changes, you know, but unlike you, I’ve always believed in me. I knew I was supposed to accomplish the things that I am accomplishing today. As of right now, I’m driving, I work through the leaf season and snow season for DPW, the Department of Public Works.

Len Sipes: DPW, the Department of Public Works.

India Frazier: Yes, sir.

Len Sipes: In the city of Washington D.C.

India Frazier: In the city of Washington D.C, and I have a CDL Class A –

Len Sipes: Okay, Commercial Driver’s License.

India Frazier: Yes, sir.

Len Sipes: Go ahead.

India Frazier: Yes, sir. And I know I can drive. I love doing what I do. You know what I’m saying? And I love coming home to my family and seeing that my grandson and my daughter’s okay, and I love knowing that my grandmother’s fine. These are the people that believed in me and pushed me to do and be all that I can be, and then I have, Dr. Butler and Miss Ishman, who is my direct parole officer, and she inspires me. I mean, it’s not a point in time that I can’t pick up that phone and call Miss Ishman and say, Miss Ishman, so and so, and so and so, well, Miss Frazier, let’s look at it like this. I might be upset, and then I’ll call her, and then she’ll just get it, she’ll just iron things out for me.

Tracy Marlow: You built a network up.

India Frazier: I built my network.

Tracy Marlow: And that’s what we need to know in society is you can make it if you build a network up.

India Frazier: – people believe in you and give you that chance. See, this is it. You can’t look at me based on a television program, or you can’t understand who I am until you get to know who I am, until you sit down and talk to me and find out who I am, and that despite something happening 10 years ago, it’s where I’m standing at today.

Len Sipes: But society doesn’t give us that opportunity. If society is going to say ex-con, criminal, I don’t like you, I’m not funding programs for you, I’m not going to give you a second chance, I don’t want you in this job, and I understand, all three of us understand the fears of the public. How can you not watch evening television without understanding the fears of the public? But what do you want to tell the public directly? What are the key things that you need the public to understand, because you’re not one of the failures, you’re one of the successes, but yet, you’re still facing the same baggage. So what do you want to tell the public?

Tracy Marlow: I want to tell the public, don’t look at what I’ve done, look at what I’m doing. My past is my past, and only we’re going to leave it behind if you give me a chance. All I’m asking for is a chance. I’m not saying that I’m going to be perfect. I’m not going to sit here and tell this, oh, I’m going to be a perfect and never do this, but I’m going to live for today and try to do the best I can do in society under society laws. It’s not breaking up anymore.

Len Sipes: Right. India? And what do you tell society?

India Frazier: I have to tell society that you can’t base my life today on my past. I’m a totally different person. I’ve worked hard to get where I am today, and don’t look at me and make a judgment call on what’s on paper. Look at me and make a judgment call on how I carry myself.

Len Sipes: We only have a couple minutes left. My heavens, this segment just flew by like wildfire! What is instrumental in your lives? Was it programs, you mentioned, Tracy, the group, or India, you mentioned the group process through Dr. Butler. What is it, drug treatment programs, job programs, what is it that we need to help you and others like you cross that bridge?

Tracy Marlow: Drug treatment first, program, and aftercare. After we come out of treatment, you need some aftercare. You need sessions, groups. The group that Dr. Butler runs is wonderful. Somebody’s talking about everyday life. We need to know about every, going on in your life, this life, productive other people in life. We need groups and more programs.

Len Sipes: If we had sufficient numbers of programs, how many additional people could we create, if you will, taxpayers instead of tax burdens? How many additional people would cross that bridge over to the taxpaying side of the coin?

India Frazier: You would probably have, maybe, at least 25% more instead of a 50% going back in, you might have 25% more. I’m not going to say 50%, because, you know, like Tracy said, it’s not, everybody’s not perfect. Everybody’s not ready to live that right life. You know what I’m saying? Everybody’s trying, some people try to find the easy way out. But you would have at least 25% turnover. I would say at least 60-75% wouldn’t go back.

Len Sipes: If society was willing to look at you as individuals, especially in terms of jobs, and if the programs were available, would that make a significant difference in terms of how many people go back to prison and how many people commit additional crimes?

Tracy Marlow: Of course.

India Frazier: Definitely, yes!

Tracy Marlow: Definitely!

India Frazier: I mean, you have jobs in the District of Columbia that, for real, for real, could save a lot of people’s lives. People gotta eat! You’ve got to feed your family! You know what I’m saying? You’ve got to pay your rent! You know, the rent lady don’t want to hear about, you can’t pay your rent because you couldn’t find a job. You’ve got to pay your rent. So what you going to do? You’re going to go out there and do something stupid and go right back to where you were. So if you have these openings within the District for these ex-offenders, or parole, probation, you know what I’m saying, that would gear them towards working harder toward accomplishing things they need to accomplish, the goals they need to accomplish. It worked for me.

Len Sipes: I think the point is, is that, again, we hear the failures. We are never exposed to the successes. I’ve spent 40 years in the criminal justice system, 30 years talking to people caught up in the criminal justice system. I see a lot of success stories. But those success stories are simply never told. That’s one of the reasons we’re doing this program today, is to talk about the fact that there are successes.

Tracy Marlow: Yes, it is. It is. And I’m definitely one of them, and the best is yet to come! Because I’m not finished. I have kids, I’m raising kids, and they are not going through the system! They are not going to go through the system. I am raising them to understand that, if you break the law, these are the options that happen. We have to break the cycle. The cycle has to be broken.

Len Sipes: And the cycle is broken when mom comes out of the prison system, gets programs, gets treatment, gets a job, and the case, your case, your own three ice cream trucks, you didn’t let anybody stand in your way, Tracy! And you’re saving, not just yourself, you’re saving your kids. India, you’re doing the same thing.

India Frazier: Yeah, I love my family. I love my family, and my grandson, he’s the most inspirational power, power behind every move I make, because I want him, I don’t want him to go through what I went through, you know what I’m saying? I can’t make the choices for him down the line, but I don’t want him to go through what I went through, and I’m going to give him and push him, I say, lead by example, and the rest will follow.

Len Sipes: Right. Now, again, so many people come out of the prison system, and they say, Mr. Sipes, or Leonard, I’m not going to go back. I’m not going back, I’m not going back, I’m not going back. 6 months later, they’re back. Now that’s a reality. There are individuals who cannot make it, or they’re not ready to make it in society, and they go back to the prison system. So we have to acknowledge that. Again, part of the fears and the perceptions on the part of the public, but I’ve encountered, again, hundreds, thousands of people just like yourselves. One out of every 45 individuals caught up in the criminal justice system are in, I’m sorry, one out of every 45 people in the community are caught up currently in the criminal justice system. That’s like one out of 20 minimum, if you count people who have been caught up in the criminal justice system in the past. That means that all of us are running into offenders and ex-offenders and people caught up in the criminal justice system every day! By the scores! We’re running into lots of people. I mean, is the question, do we want them to get the mental health treatment, do we want them to have drug treatment, do we want them to be involved in programs, do we want them to be employed, or do we want to interact with these individuals without those programs, and without those skills?

India Frazier: Well, if you don’t implement programs, if you don’t implement treatment, you don’t set aside a certain amount of money or set aside programs to help these people take their life and create a new person within, you know what I’m saying, or guide them, or steer them towards the goals they need to go towards, you’re going to keep on having a return rate of 50%, you know what I’m saying? So yeah, we need mental health. We need drug treatment. We need voc rehab. We need certain little groups that Dr. Butler be having. You know, you need all of these things because they’re reconditioning your mind to go towards what you need to go towards to be a better person.

Len Sipes: The final minute, Tracy, in terms of, we’ve heard Dr. Willa Butler several times throughout the program. She runs a women’s group where people who have been in the prison system as women offenders, they come together, they talk about their issues, they talk about how to solve their issues, that’s tough. You’ve got only a couple seconds.

Tracy Marlow: Yes it is. Yes, because that is very powerful, because women need women, and when you talk in them groups, you get real deep. You talk about some personal things that’s going on, because one thing, to deal with a person that’s on mental health status, is really something, because first thing society, oh, they crazy! People have complications, anxieties, pressures in the world, and they can’t cope with it and deal with it, all they need is somebody to talk to, and these groups are very important.

Len Sipes: And that’s the point that I wanted to make. Thank you, ladies, for being on the first segment. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for sticking with us as we explore this whole issue of offenders coming out of the prison system who make it, who become taxpayers, not tax burdens. Look for us in the second segment as we continue to explore this topic with two additional guests. Please stay with us.

[music playing]

Len Sipes: Hi, welcome back to D.C. Public Safety. I continue to be your host, Leonard Sipes. Our guests today on the second segment are Cortez McDaniel and Donald Zimmerman, both individuals currently under the supervision of my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. As I explained in the first segment, we are a federally funded, a parole and probation agency here in Washington, D.C. The concept is people being released from prison. 50% go back after 3 years, they go back to the prison system, but 50% don’t. The story of the 50% who don’t go back just doesn’t seem to be told. Again, you’re exposed every day to the media about the stories of people caught up in the criminal justice system who do go back, you’re never exposed to the fact that there are lots of individuals who don’t. To talk about that, Cortez and Donald, welcome to D.C. Public Safety, and Cortez, we’re going to start with you in terms of the second segment, and what is it that you think the public needs to understand about people coming back from the prison system? I mean, they say the word convict, they say the word ex-con, they have another vision in their mind. I’m not quite sure they have you in mind. Correct or incorrect?

Cortez McDaniel: That’s probably correct. What I would have the public to think about is how they’d like to be associated with us as homecomers. We like to refer to returning citizens as homecomers, and understand that these folks are coming home anyway, whether you like it or whether you don’t. Now how the public is associated with them is kind of up to the society as to how they accept them back. They need to understand the impact that we’re capable of having on society in a positive way, the value that we have, the talent that we have is a very, very large talent pool, and a large number of men who are very capable of being productive members of society.

Len Sipes: Okay, and I think one of the reasons, in terms of doing this program, they come to my mind, is employment. There’s literally thousands of individuals under our supervision at Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency who would make perfectly good employees out of the 16,000 on any given day. They are years away from their crimes, they are years away from their last substance, positive substance abuse test. But they can’t find work, and they’re having trouble finding work, and that makes it difficult for them, it makes it difficult for us. To me, that stereotype of ex-con, ex-offender, is the barrier. So what do you say to people in terms of, in terms of that? They have this sense that, you’ve been in the prison system, I don’t want to hire you, that’s all there is to it. I’ve got lots of people to choose from, you were there, you’re not getting this job. What do you say to that person?

Cortez McDaniel: Well, I would ask them to actually look at forgiveness and what that encompasses. If a person has served their amount of time that they’ve been given to serve in prison, if they’ve done that, and they’ve successfully completed that, and they come out, and they do the things that they need to be doing in terms of supervision, then there’s absolutely no reason why this person doesn’t deserve to be able to experience some quality of life themselves.

Len Sipes: Now Cortez, I’m completely at fault, I didn’t properly introduce you when you came onto the program. You were with who? What is your job today?

Cortez McDaniel: Again, my name is Cortez McDaniel, I’m a transitional coordinator with the Father McKenna Center.

Len Sipes: Okay, and what is the Father McKenna Center?

Cortez McDaniel: The Father McKenna Center is a daytime service for homeless men, underprivileged men of Washington, D.C., predominantly African American men who come in for our services during the course of a day. What we do is we assess men, and we act as a triage to link people up with whatever their needs might be, whether it be drug and alcohol rehabilitation, whether it be mental health services, housing issues, whatever the issues might be, we try to work with them and link them up with agencies that will help them in that direction.

Len Sipes: Did you have a hard time getting that job?

Cortez McDaniel: Actually, the way I got that job is I’m also core counsel person on the, with the Phelps Stokes National Homecomers’ Academy, and we were asked, as a result of a newspaper article, to send some people over to speak to that group of men, and once we were there, the people, the administration in place there were pretty impressed with what we had to offer, and so a relationship started with me there –

Len Sipes: And that’s how you ended up getting the job.

Cortez McDaniel: That’s exactly right.

Len Sipes: Okay, Donald, you’re with the same operation, correct?

Donald Zimmerman: Yes, sir.

Len Sipes: And tell me a little bit about your story. You came out of the prison system, and what happened?

Donald Zimmerman: Well, I came out of the prison system, and initially when I came home, I was a general manager of a trucking company –

Len Sipes: Before or after?

Donald Zimmerman: This was after my incarceration.

Len Sipes: Okay. How did you get a job as a general manager of a trucking company?

Donald Zimmerman: Some friends of the family, you know, they just –

Len Sipes: Okay. You had family connections.

Donald Zimmerman: Yeah. They just hired me on, and I learned the business, and I was doing that for a while until the economy folded, and then I went to school to be a chef, so now I’m currently working at a Hospital through a temporary agency called Food Team, and I do temporary cook positions there, but –

Len Sipes: Can I get into the larger issue? I started off with the larger issue before a proper introduction of both of you, of once again, the stereotype. Now I’m not going to be upset with society about their stereotypes. With the ladies on the first segment, I was watching television, I turned to the National Geographic channel of all channels, and then there was a story about guys in prison, and then I’m flipping through the channels, and there’s the Arts & Entertainment channel, there’s another story about guys in prison, and I sat back and said, you know, if that’s the public’s perception of people caught up in the criminal justice system, there’s no hope. The story they’re telling was a perfectly accurate story. They weren’t being dishonest, but it scares people. The evening news scares people. What happens when they read their newspapers scares people, and then we have the two of you, and you’re not scary. So what does the public need to understand about this issue of people coming out of the prison system? What does the public need to understand to get them to support programs or to get them to give you a chance at a job?

Donald Zimmerman: The first thing that the public needs to realize is that we’re human, and that we have made mistakes like everyone in life, and we have learned to overcome our mistakes. They have to learn to accept us and give us that second chance, as if, like a parent would do with their child. They say, once you finish your prison sentence, that your debt is paid to society. But is that truly happening? We tend to have labels put on us like ex-cons and ex-felons, see, but the thing is, you have to take all them labels away and recognize that I am a man and I am a woman and I will stand for something, and I will push, by any means necessary, I will be accepted, and with that positive attitude, only good things will happen.

Cortez McDaniel: I don’t want to take away from that, the homecomer’s obligation to change their whole approach to life, their whole thought process, and matter of fact, before I came home, about three years actually before I came home, I wrote a book called recidivism prevention workbook. For people that don’t know, recidivism is commonly used to describe the tendency of a person who’s been convicted of a crime to relapse or return back to criminal behavior.

Len Sipes: That’s a wonderful –

Cortez McDaniel: So I thought about that through my own life, and I thought of how valuable it could be to a lot of men. So in a sense, in my own life, I realize that my whole thought process had deteriorated into how my approach to life was a way of criminal thinking, and so I had to change my principal system, my moral judgment, everything about that had to be looked at, and I had to be man enough and willing to change that. So I started, I don’t like to use program again, because it’s beginning and end to that, but I started this class that encompassed criminal thinking and criminal behavior, and it was very successful in prison, and I came out here in society with the same ideology that we are capable of being refocused, and that we have a responsibility to approach life differently.

Len Sipes: How many people who come out of the prison system come out of the prison system with that understanding? Lots of people who have told me, I’m getting out, and when I used to work inside the prison system, I’m getting out, and I’m not going back, came back.

Donald Zimmerman: Well you have a lot of –

Len Sipes: Came back pretty quickly.

Donald Zimmerman: Well, you have a lot of men and women who come out with the intent that they’re not going to go back, but when they get out and they see the situation that they’re, no jobs, or they don’t want to accept a job, because I have the notion that there are jobs, people just don’t want to go work at McDonald’s, don’t want to go work at Wendy’s, whereas when you were in the federal prison system, you work for $5.25 a month. So with that being said, they see their situations, and they don’t have that support system on the outside that will reeducate. See, one, you have to reeducate yourself into, like, your morals and your values, saying, you know, positive things to you, like, you know, you can do better, you can find a job. It’s not how much money you make, it’s what you do with the money you make. You know, when you start to understand the simpler things in life and start, you know, understanding true happiness and just knowing that you have to, you know, first, that you’re on probation or parole, you have to first comply, take it one situation at a time, then you can move to the next step. Once you start to comply, then you can start going to your meetings, then you can start building relationships, and then eventually, as time progress, you will start to reeducate yourself with better understanding and more.

Len Sipes: Okay, so the point in all of this is that, if you are willing to go through that process, and if you’re willing to seek help, you can cross that bridge. You can go from the tax burden to the taxpayer. You can be employed, but it’s really upon you if you, and how much –

Cortez McDaniel: Well, the support system is very, very necessary.

Len Sipes: That’s the point I want –

Cortez McDaniel: And that’s, with Phelps Stokes, that’s what we’re all about at Phelps Stokes, the Homecomers’ Academy. That’s what we’re all about is providing a support system for a homecomer that lets them understand that, and helps to reinforce these ideologies in him and helps him understand that he has certain responsibilities that he needs to live up to, but also that he’s not alone, that he has some support and some assistance in getting to where he needs to get to. A lot of times, people will come out of prison with, have purposed themselves never to go back, but they get out, and the support falls through. A lot of times people have become estranged from their families for different reasons, and they don’t, they lack people who care or people who are willing to take a chance on them.

Len Sipes: And that’s what the ladies said during the first segment. If you’ve got that group of people who can support you emotionally and get you through this process, that really does increase the chances of you doing well.

Cortez McDaniel: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: Okay. So the point is this. The final minutes of the program is that what I said on the first segment is that there are thousands of you guys out there struggling, but they’re ready to make that move. They’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. They’re sick and tired of being caught up in the criminal justice system. They would be good employees, they would be good citizens. There’s a certain point where society does have to recognize who is at risk and who’s trying, who’s struggling and who’s trying to make it, correct? I mean, that is incumbent upon employers and incumbent upon people, I mean, we have to fund a certain amount of programs to help people cross that bridge. Am I right or wrong?

Cortez McDaniel: Well, yeah. I think we have to have entities. Like I said, I don’t like to use the word program, because when I talk about a program, I’m talking about a beginning and an end.

Len Sipes: And this is lifelong.

Cortez McDaniel: But we believe in relationships, and we believe in those relationships being everlasting –

Donald Zimmerman: Brotherhoods and sisterhoods.

Cortez McDaniel: The dynamic may change as things evolve, but we believe those relationships are important –

Len Sipes: And the same with the research on Delancey Street out in San Francisco 25 years ago. That’s exactly what they said in terms of the former offenders coming together as a group to help each other out. So that’s the bottom line.

Donald Zimmerman: What we need is real people dealing with real problems trying to find real solutions.

Len Sipes: Okay. And you’ve got the final word. Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve come in contact with Cortez McDaniel and Donald Zimmerman. This is D.C. Public Safety. We really appreciate the fact that you’ve been with us today to explore this very important topic of people who are successes who have come out of the prison system, and yet at the same time made successes of themselves. We appreciate your attention, and please stick with us and watch for us next time as we explore another very important topic in the criminal justice system. Have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Video Ends]

Filed Under: Corrections-Prisons, Criminal Justice, Drug Treatment, Education and Vocational Assistance, Employment, Interviews with Offenders, Mental Health, Parole and Probation, Reentry, Video Podcast, Women Offenders

Violence Reduction Program-”DC Public Safety”

January 3, 2011 By Len Leave a Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts. We now average 200,000 requests a month.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/12/violence-reduction-program-dc-public-safety/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today, we are here to talk about the violence reduction program here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. CSOSA is a federally funded parole and probation agency with responsibility for parole and probation issues in the great city of Washington, D.C. To talk to us about this program we have three extraordinarily interesting people. We have Zoë, and that’s not her real name. She is an individual under supervision of Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency to talk about her participation in the violence reduction program. We have Tanesha Clardy, and she is a community supervision officer, and we have Michelle Hare-Diggs, she is a treatment specialist, and to Zoë, and to Tanesha, and to Michelle, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Tanesha Clardy: Thank you.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Thank you.

Zoe: Thank you.

Len Sipes: All right. We’re going to start off with you, Michelle, and you’re going to explain what the violence reduction program is all about.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: The violence reduction program was put into place by CSOSA to, it’s to successfully help the offenders on probation to successfully complete parole and probation. There’s three phases to the group. Phase one kind of gets everybody comfortable with being in the group, comfortable with the group process, so we do a lot of, I guess I would say icebreaker exercises, which is treatment readiness exercises. That runs three weeks, and they come twice a week for three weeks, and then we move on to phase two, which is the meat of the program, and we do a whole slough of, we learn a whole slough of activities, and it’s not just violence. Most of the techniques can be used in everyday life: communication styles, different communication styles, relaxation techniques, so everything that we do in the group can also, it just doesn’t relate to just violence. And that phase runs 12 weeks, and they come twice a week. And then we move on to phase three, which is, the purpose of phase three is to help, we want the offenders to, in turn, want to be able to help someone else to successfully complete parole and probation, so we integrate them into community activities, and that phase runs six weeks, and they come once a week.

Len Sipes: So in essence, what we’re doing is helping people, the theory in criminology called cognitive behavioral therapy, where it’s sort of thinking through life’s event differently than what they’ve done in the past, and I would imagine that’s sort of what we’re talking about now, correct?

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Yes.

Len Sipes: So it is how to stay away from situations of violence, potential situations for violence, how to extract yourself, how to deal with all of that in such a way not to land you back in the criminal justice system.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Exactly, and there’s situations where you can’t do that, how to make a better choice, what would be a better choice.

Len Sipes: A better choice. Okay. We were talking beforehand, my wife constantly tells me about better choices. I get angry at my daughters, and she’ll tell me to go cool off. I mean, this is sort of a lifelong learning situation for a lot of us, correct?

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Right. So it’s just situations where we try to, if you’re in a situation where you can’t just walk out, what would be the better thing to do, how to take a time out in your head. Some of the techniques sound corny, but they really work. Things that you would never think of, how to count to ten, and we hear it, but do we really do it? How to shout loudly, stop it, to yourself, so you’re able to not give yourself that continuous negative self-talk.

Len Sipes: And Tanesha, we’re going to go to you for the next question. You work with these women, the women offenders on a regular basis. Do you deal just with the women, or with the men, or both?

Tanesha Clardy: I deal with both.

Len Sipes: With both. Do you have any preferences over which group? Are women easier to deal with than men? Or do they, or they bring their own unique issues?

Tanesha Clardy: All of them bring unique characteristics to the program.

Len Sipes: Because the average person is going to –

Tanesha Clardy: What I’ve discovered is that women, they have different issues, totally different issues that come from, as far as growing up and being a female, you have molestation, you have rape, you have substance abuse, and you just have emotional, physical abuse. So those are different issues that women more deal with than men.

Len Sipes: And that’s pretty much clarified by the criminological literature, by all the studies basically, talking about the fact that women offenders, women caught up in the criminal justice system have much higher rates of substance abuse than men, have higher rates of mental health issues, and the rate of prior sexual abuse is astounding. It is one of the highest correlates or the things that are connected to crime, it is astounding as to how many women caught up in the criminal justice system come from that sort of a history, and the women offenders that I’ve talked to in the past, they’re, they’ve had a lot of explosive anger going on with them and throughout their lives, and a lot of it’s self destructive, which I would imagine a lot of the emotional issues and substance abuse issues come from that history.

Tanesha Clardy: True. It’s all about their defense mechanisms. It’s things that women internalize more, so when it gets to the point where you can’t take it anymore, it’s easier to just lash out, and so it’s probably easier for them to just, you know, commit an act of violence when they feel as though they have to defend themselves. They have to protect themselves, because here you are, you’re coming up against me. And so that’s what I’ve just, you know, just noticed on my women offenders.

Len Sipes: Either one of you can answer this question now. We’re talking about basically a four month program where we take individuals with a history of violence, and we sort of restructure who they are and what they are in terms of their day to day ability to cope with the stresses of life. Correct?

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Right.

Tanesha Clardy: Right.

MD: But I think the group is, because it is four months long, it gives you time to really think about behaviors and how it may have impacted your decisions in the past, so that’s the real purpose of the group. We want you to see how your past behaviors now, how have they impacted your decisions, and for whatever reason, have put you on parole and probation, and how can you rethink those past behaviors, and how can we use them differently in the future to help us make better decisions.

Len Sipes: Right. We don’t want the person engaging in additional acts of violence, so this protects the public. We don’t want the person engaging in additional acts of violence because it protects the taxpayer, because the person theoretically does better, and the research indicates that individuals do better with these programs, cognitive behavioral therapy programs, or violence reduction programs. So this is a win-win situation for everybody. What we’re doing is helping people understand that the stuff that they’ve done in the past, they cannot continue to do in the future, correct?

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Right. And in turn, we also, not just for themselves, but because some, like with the women offenders, some of them are mothers or sisters, the skills that you learn, even again, they sound corny, but as you’re at home, I’m sure, they joke about it later on. Like, we did this skill. But if you really practice it, and this is something that you try to practice with your siblings at home or your children, or your significant other, it’s not something that they themselves are just learning, they’re also teaching others.

Len Sipes: And that’s important. I mean, what you teach individuals, they teach their sons, they teach their daughters, they teach their peers, a lot of people who have been caught up in the criminal justice system who are now doing well, people sort of wonder, well, why are you doing so well? And one of the reasons why they’re doing so well is they’ve learned a new way of thinking about who they are and their lives. Most people don’t want to return to the criminal justice system. I get a sense that a lot of people who are caught up in the criminal justice system don’t quite understand how they got there to begin with. All they were doing were hanging out with friends, drinking a beer, doing whatever, and somebody said the wrong thing, and they lashed out. It’s not like they sat down and said, gee, I want to assault somebody violently with a beer bottle tonight. Stuff happens.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: And stuff happens quickly.

Len Sipes: Stuff happens quickly. It happens rapidly. And sometimes you’re not even quite sure why you did what you did, correct?

Tanesha Clardy: Very true, very true. But I’m, I guess, that’s the benefit of the program, because instead of just reacting the way you normally would act, you sit back and you think about, okay, what is my next move? Like, you have to make a choice, and hopefully the choice is a positive one.

Len Sipes: All right. Now we’re going to go over to Zoë. Zoë is, what we said before the program, was the truly authentic person sitting in this room. The rest of us are paid by the federal government to do what we do on a day to day basis. Zoë, you’re here, because I’m quite sure you volunteered to be on the radio show, and just absolutely adored the idea of sharing your feelings with the public.

Zoe: Absolutely!

Len Sipes: Okay, cool!

Zoe: The public needs to be informed.

Len Sipes: Cool. Why does the public need to be informed?

Zoe: Well, because everyone that commits a crime or commits an act of violence isn’t a bad person. It’s just a way, you have to rethink the way that you’re going about things, think about how you’re going to approach this situation, and think about who you’re in the situation with. You can’t react the same to everyone, so that’s what I take most out of the group, that even though we’re not talking about something that directly applies to me, I can take the message out of that and apply it to my life, and it’s helpful.

Len Sipes: Well, what we’ve said before throughout the entire program is the sense that too many people are being caught up in too many acts of violence. They need, what we call in the field, cognitive behavioral therapy, what the other person, the average person listening to this program would be, come to you-know-what meeting, or come to reality meeting, or whatever, you know, our parents read us the riot act in the past, we got punished, we were instructed by uncles, aunts, others, people in the community that what we were doing was inappropriate. We had no business doing it. Are we suggesting that people didn’t grow up with those guidelines?

Zoe: Well, some people didn’t. Everyone didn’t have that uncle or aunt or cousins or family members around to give that positive reinforcement, or even still, just the things that you were doing wrong, no one told you they were wrong. No one really reprimanded you for it. So that catches up with you in the end, and pretty much here, we’re just reversing, kind of, the bad learned behavior.

Len Sipes: Well, there are two questions. Is it too easy to get involved in acts of violence?

Zoe: Yeah –

Len Sipes: And, you know, again, most of the people that I’ve talked to have been caught up in the criminal justice system, didn’t say, you know, I set out that evening to beat my brother over the head with a beer bottle because he insulted my wife. I mean, that’s not how it went down.

Zoe: No, it went down, in the flash of an eye, before you knew it, someone was hemmed up because of whatever internal anger that, well, that I had, this is my personal experience. Yeah, so before I knew it, I was already at a 9, and just that one little small incident just took me to 27 somewhere, and I ended up in the system.

Len Sipes: It was an explosion.

Zoe: It was an explosion.

Len Sipes: Okay. So you’ve been through the criminal justice system, and you have been through the violence reduction program –

Zoe: Currently in the program.

Len Sipes: You’re currently in the program, and what does that mean to you now?

Zoe: Well, for one, when we first started the program, I was kind of sketchy about, I just really didn’t understand why I was in the group, but now, I look forward to coming to the group. These are just people, these are my friends, now, actually, and we talk about different experiences that we have throughout the week, and it’s helpful. It’s really helpful. Whether I’m actually joking around, or we come in there and play around, but at the end of the day, all right, we actually got something out of this, and it’s valuable to put forth in your everyday life.

Len Sipes: That’s amazing to me, because that is something the average person doesn’t hear. The average person listening to this program is saying, wait a minute, people who are violent belong in prison. They don’t understand that the overwhelming majority of people caught up in the correctional system or in the street, they’re under parole and probation supervision. Parole meaning, they’ve come out of the prison system, probation means the judge decided to sentence them to a period of community supervision, and not necessarily prison, but prison’s always hanging over their heads. So the overwhelming majority of people caught up in acts of violence aren’t in prison, they’re in the community.

Zoe: Yeah. Your next door neighbor.

Len Sipes: Their next door neighbor, the person you interact with at the gas station, the person who serves you at your local restaurant, the person who hands you your dry cleaning, it’s one out of every 45 people in the community are under active community supervision. Now most criminologists have said, well, if it’s one out of every 45 under active, current community supervision with correctional systems, it’s at minimum one out of every 20. So you’re encountering people every day by the scores who were either once caught up in the criminal justice system or currently caught up in the criminal justice system. So these programs, this particular program, what does it mean to you, and what does it mean to public safety?

Zoe: Well, as far as public safety and, the program really just has people to, I don’t really –

Len Sipes: It’s a hard question. I’m sorry, it is a ridiculously hard question to answer. But I mean, the bottom line is, if more people were involved in programs like this, would there be less violence?

Zoe: Yes, there definitely would be less violence.

Len Sipes: Okay, and why is that?

Zoe: Because it changes your way of thinking about it. Change the way of thinking about the situations that you’re in, and things that may seem like a threat to take you from 10 to 27, they’re not, they don’t bother you as much anymore.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: I also think the peer interaction they’re getting from the group, the peer feedback that they’re getting, things that they would, there are situations where we’ll come out, somebody in the group will come up with a scenario that may have happened over the weekend where they didn’t think that there was any other way to handle it, and the peer interaction or peer feedback that they’re getting inside the group like, okay, maybe you could have tried this, you could have tried that, and then it seems more realistic. Like, okay, maybe I could have done that, where some people, sometimes you think, the only thing I could have done was hit this person or lashed out or cussed the person out, or have, however you may have acted before, the interaction that the peers give, the interaction in the group from the peers is just, it’s amazing. The feedback, well, next time, maybe you could try this, walk out, come back in, things that you would never think that you yourself could do, you know, they test themselves, and I really like that.

Len Sipes: We’re halfway through the program, and I’m going to reintroduce everybody here at the microphones today. Zoë, not her real name, but an individual kind enough to participate. She is currently in the violence reduction program here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Community Supervision Officer Tanesha Clardy, and what most people call parole and probation agents, we call community supervision officer, and a treatment specialist, Michelle Hare-Diggs, all three are before our microphones talking about the violence reduction program here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Now ladies, I’m going to go back to my experience when I ran groups in the Maryland prison system, and one of the things that I discovered is how folks react in a treatment setting, and how they act in the community can be two different things.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Well, I think what makes this group unique, because I’m a treatment specialist and I’m not a CSO, they kind of see it as separate, so I think the group tends to be a lot more real. It’s not as, I think what most people would consider as fake, and Zoë, you can correct me if I’m wrong.

Zoe: No, I agree with you. I like, okay, at first, I wasn’t sure about it, but I like the fact that it’s, the time period, the length of it, because if we were meeting once a week for a month, I wouldn’t know these people, and I wouldn’t tell them anything. It wouldn’t be a conversation, it’d just be Ms. Hare-Diggs talking to us. She’d just be talking at us pretty much, vs. us interacting.

Len Sipes: A lot of people go through these programs because they’re stuck with going through these programs. How authentic is this? Any one of you can answer. How real is this? How deeply do we get into the lives of the individuals, and is there real change? That’s what the public wants to know?

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Well, it is a real change, because one, you don’t have to be there. You can just be at home, and next thing you know, you’ll get someone at your door taking you back to jail. You don’t have to be there. But you come, and then you choose to participate. So you can come and not say anything, and you can come and share your experiences, so just by that, and just us learning to trust each other, we can talk about these things and throw ideas off the wall and give each other constructive criticism or just say pretty much whatever we’re thinking without it becoming an issue. So the fact that we have that freedom, that ability to just let it all hang out and put it out there. We get a lot of things accomplished. We talk about a lot of different issues, and we hear each other out. We’re more receptive to our peers, because they’re not someone talking down at us, they’re someone that’s going through the same thing I am.

Len Sipes: How scary of a place is that? I’ve talked to a lot of people who have been through drug treatment describing it as one of the scariest events of their lives, because they had to confront all the garbage that has gone on in their lives that calls them to be caught up in the criminal justice system. Sometimes treatment is not pretty. Sometimes it’s dragging a person through everything that happened beforehand and coming to an understanding that it doesn’t matter what happened to you beforehand, what happens is now and how to control yourself now.

Zoe: It definitely gets ugly at times where, you know, the group forces an individual to look at their own behaviors and stop putting the blame on everybody else, from the PO to their mother to, sometimes, it’s really difficult to look at your own behavior sometimes, so it gets ugly when the group forces that person to address and take some ownership in their behaviors.

Len Sipes: When I did group, it was like going to Mars in many instances because, no, you went to a different planet. You got involved in an extraordinarily intensive examination of people’s lives. In my life, the lives of the participants in the program, it was scary at times, because, not because of what they said, not because of threats or anything along those lines, but you dig deep into the individual’s life, and suddenly, they are dealing with issues of their past for the first time. They’ve never really dealt with them before. Am I right or wrong?

Tanesha Clardy: You’re definitely right, because I’ve definitely seen a change in, especially the females who weren’t very interested in being in the program at all. Like for Zoë, she definitely came a long way. She didn’t want to do the program, she didn’t understand why she had to do the program, she understood the charge, but to her, I’m not an angry person, I’m not a violent person, the situation happened, it is what it is, I just want to do this and get on with my life. But she comes to group, she actively participates, she’s very open, she accepts responsibility for her actions, and I’ve just definitely seen a positive change in her.

Len Sipes: And I think that’s the most meaningful part of all of this. When you go through interacting with a whole bunch of people, and they come to understand what’s happened to them in the past, and they come to understand that they can control it, there are a lot of people caught up in the criminal justice system who have been, I don’t know, I mean, ships on the ocean without sails. I mean, the wind’s just pushing them all over the place, and suddenly, they learn how to put up sails and move in the direction that they want to move in. Boy, that’s a great analogy, isn’t it? I just thought of that! And then there are people who are listening to this who are going, you know, Mr. Sipes, you’re so full of hooey, don’t you understand that they’re just jiving you, they’re just doing what they have to do to get through the program, and –

Zoe: Well, they show. When you show back up, and you’re locked up, it’ll show whether you got something out of the program or not, and it’s all about what you put into it. You can’t expect to, okay, well my life has changed, when you don’t even talk in group. You don’t even participate. It’s not going to happen. And they’ll see you again. So if you’re trying to put your best foot forward, just go ahead and actively participate, pay attention, try to get something out of it, and you won’t, hopefully you won’t have to be in the system again.

Len Sipes: My guess is that an awful lot of people involved in the criminal justice system could use this type of, who could use this kind of program, that this kind of program would be valuable to them. It’s just not people who are ostensibly “violent offenders.” There’s a lot of people with nonviolent charges who have a history of violence. And you, we can judge that through our own instruments. We’ve pretty much come to a good understanding here at Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency through our instruments as to who that person really is, correct?

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Correct. I think anyone can benefit from the program. You could probably benefit from the program yourself because it’s all about conflict resolution, different communication styles, and coping skills, because it’s nothing but a table that separates me from Zoë. I could have been in that same restaurant, and someone pushed me, and I turned around and slapped them, and here I am, I’m on supervision.

Zoe: That’s what happened. No, that’s what happened.

Len Sipes: Yeah, but that could happen to any of us. But I mean –

Michelle Hare-Diggs: It’s all about how you react and the choice that you make.

Len Sipes: And according to the research, most individuals who are caught up in the criminal justice system at the time of the arrest were under the influence of something. And most were young. So if you have a younger individual full of pee and vinegar who doesn’t feel that good about themselves, who –

Tanesha Clardy: Pee and vinegar?

Len Sipes: As Tanesha tries to recover from that statement, and, no, no, no, I mean, this is the reality of what we’re dealing with, is it not? I mean, tell me if I’m wrong. It’s, they’re young, they’re very emotional, they’re caught up in the moment, somebody has insulted them, or there’s a perceived insult, may be real, may not be real, and that person just explodes, and that person, they don’t have to be young?

Tanesha Clardy: No, they don’t have to be young. I mean, we don’t have many old people in our group, but there’s a few. Yeah. And they, they get just as much out of the group as I would, or as the next person. So you don’t have to be young, you don’t have to be a male or a female to get caught up in the moment, and next thing you know…

Len Sipes: But you do have to be willing to understand how you became involved in the criminal justice system, how you came to be arrested that evening, and that arrest is oftentimes just the tip of an iceberg. I mean, people caught up in the criminal justice system, they’re here for a burglary, but you know, they’ve been down the road before. They’ve been involved in the criminal justice system. We just don’t know about it. Most crimes aren’t reported, most reported crimes do not end up in arrest. I’m talking about national statistics, and most reported, even when they’re prosecuted, most felonies in this country don’t get prison time. So I mean, to be involved in the criminal justice system, you’ve really had to do something, or you did a series of things before they send you to prison. So, I mean, the point is, is that people are actively engaged in lots of different things that could get them involved with our agency or put them behind prison bars. I mean, it’s just not one instance in many cases, and in many cases, there’s a history of violence, there’s a history of crime, there’s a history of acting out.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Right, the group also focuses on trying to get the individuals to understand what they did and how it has led, again –

Tanesha Clardy: Ownership.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Ownership, taking ownership to their behaviors, because a lot of things are learned behaviors, and they don’t see anything wrong with it, so we have to really focus on what you did and how it’s affected your life.

Len Sipes: And it’s not just, I guess the point that I’m trying to make, Zoë, is that it’s, in many cases, it’s not just one altercation. We’re talking about a history of inappropriate behaviors.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: So we try to focus on learned behaviors and unlearning behaviors, and it can be done.

Len Sipes: That’s the interesting thing where the audience does need to hear that. I mean, you can be 27-years-old, according to Zoë, you can be 47 years old, and you can have this whole life of not making the best of decisions, and you can come out of these sort of encounters making much better decisions. It does work, is the question the average person listening to this program is saying, ladies, does it work?

Michelle Hare-Diggs: It does. I mean, it’s hard for an individual, if you’re 47, 27, whatever, if you’ve been reacting the same way your whole life to whatever situation, if you’re used to lashing out, holding off hitting somebody, smacking somebody, spitting, whatever, and then you’re in a group with other people who have the same issues, some of the similar, some of the same, similar incidents have happened, and you can hear how somebody else is able to react to a situation, it makes you think at some point, okay, maybe I can try that, you might, you might not want to try it the first time, maybe not even the second time, but the third time, be like, okay, I can try that, and then if it works, it works, if not, we use so many different skills, you can try a different one, a different type of coping skill –

Len Sipes: Like retreating.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Retreating, right. Or counting to 10, removing yourself, some people are like, I’m never going to walk out. I would never do this, and you just try something different. So every skill doesn’t work for everybody, but we, thinking errors, you think about, what have I been doing all these years, I’m sorry, what have I been doing all these years, and you have to think, how has it gotten me to this place? And I think that’s the biggest thing that we learn in group, so many, we do the same things over and over and over again, and if it doesn’t work, what can we do differently?

Len Sipes: I talked to a guy who went through this program who was telling me about being involved in a confrontation on the street, and for the first time in his life, he retreated. He removed himself from that situation. It was a tool that he learned in group, and he was able to use that tool and extract himself, and he simply said, my going back to prison is not worth an altercation with this idiot. And that was a huge revelation for this individual. It prevented a violent crime from going down. It prevented him from being further caught up in the criminal justice system. It saved the taxpayer tens of thousands of incarcerative dollars. That was effective. I mean, just simply saying to himself, I’m going to extract myself from this situation. I’m getting out. I’m not going back to prison.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: And I guess another thing, when you have that peer interaction in the group, the peers tell you, it’s okay to walk away. It’s not such a bad thing. Whereas before, you might have said, I’m not walking away. If this is a way of living, you’re not used to walking away, you’re used to handling things in a violent manner, or in a physical manner, and you’re hearing everyone say it’s okay to walk away, you keep telling yourself that, and if my freedom is on the line, sometimes you need that, the cost, the interaction from your peers telling you, what’s the better thing to do in this situation?

Len Sipes: We just have a couple minutes left. Ladies, I mean, to me, this has been an extraordinary half hour. To me, it really has been. The two of you who are paid to be doing this, and Zoë who got sucked into it, but I mean, the explanation, the explanation is, I think, powerful, that people can change through the right kind of programs, and if we had more of these programs, more people could change. Is that overly simplistic? If you had programs in place for more people, we could, we could have a greater impact on public safety.

Michelle Hare-Diggs: Yeah, sure.

Zoe: Definitely. Definitely.

Tanesha Clardy: This is something that could be put into the community. It doesn’t have to be called a violence reduction program. It could just be at a community center, just have people come in from the community, sit down, just learn these different skills, like, be the bigger person. You don’t always have to, of course, defend yourself, but you don’t have to do anything drastic to where you’re going to actually hurt the other person, but just turn away, walk away, I have something to live for, I have a life, I love my freedom, so okay, I’m going to let you get away with this one, and I’m going to just keep moving, because I don’t want to go to my PO and be like, yeah, I got arrested.

Len Sipes: I’m going to let you get away with this one because you are of no consequence to me. I am of consequence to me, and I’m going to protect my kids. I’m going to protect myself, and I’m going to protect my family by getting out of it –

Tanesha Clardy: Exactly.

Len Sipes: Because, my man –

Tanesha Clardy: It’s not worth it.

Len Sipes: – you’re nothing to me.

Tanesha Clardy: I have way too much to live for.

Len Sipes: I have way too much to live for. So he’s not getting away, his opponent is not getting away with anything. He’s getting away with a much better life.

Tanesha Clardy: Right.

Zoe: Right.

Len Sipes: And that’s the whole idea behind this program, right?

Tanesha Clardy: Yes.

Zoe: Yes.

Len Sipes: All right. Any final words? Before we close?

Zoe: Well…

Len Sipes: Okay, Zoë. You’ve got the final word. What is it? Is it meaningful?

Zoe: Well, the program is meaningful. I do appreciate now, I can say this now, once again. I do appreciate being chosen to be a part of it, just, just so I can see, okay, this behavior is not right. Something has to change. And now that I have some of the tools in place and some of the methods in place, I’m able to do that and not just take it to the extreme every single time.

Len Sipes: Well, for me, it’s been a wonderful half hour, ladies. I’ve really enjoyed this, and I think it’s been very meaningful, and I think a lot of people and the public are going to learn from it. Our guest today, ladies and gentlemen, Zoë, who, it’s not a real name, but she’s a person under supervision with our agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency in the violence reduction program. We have community supervision officer Tanesha Clardy, and we have treatment specialist Michelle Hare-Diggs. Ladies, again, thank you for being on the program. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety, radio programs from the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Anger Management, Interviews with Offenders, Interviews with Staff, Mental Health, Reentry, Violence Reduction Tagged With: treatment, violence, violence reduction, violent crime

The Role of Faith and Released Prisoners-DC Public Safety

November 23, 2010 By Len Leave a Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts. We now average 225,000 requests a month.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/07/the-role-of-faith-and-released-prisoners-dc-public-safety/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Back at our microphone is Reverend Yvonne Cooper. She’s here to talk about faith based mentoring and this whole concept of what it’s like to have volunteers sit down with individuals out of the prison system. What they’re doing to help these individuals readjust to life on the outside of a prison setting. With her today is Louis Sawyer. Louis is on parole being supervised by my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, we’re a federal parole and probation agency here in the District of Columbia. Before we begin the show, the usual commercial, a thank you to everybody. We are up to 225,000 requests on a monthly basis for D.C. Public Safety, radio, television, and blog, and transcripts. We really appreciate your comments. We live by your comments, whether they’re negative or positive, and we really, really, really super appreciate them. If you want to get in touch with me directly, you can do so by emailing me, Leonard, L-E-O-N-A-R-D – dot-sipes – S-I-P-E-S – @csosa.gov, or you can follow us via twitter at twitter.com/lensipes. Back to our guest, Reverend Yvonne Cooper and Louis Sawyer. Welcome to D.C. Public Safety, Yvonne and Louis.

Yvonne Cooper: Thank you so very much!

Len Sipes: It’s always fun when you’re on the program, Yvonne. There’s never a dull moment. You are enthused, you are charged up about what it is that you do, and you’re an inspiration to the rest of us who plod through, sometimes those of us who are paid to do this, we plod through this at a certain point. Sometimes our enthusiasm wanes, sometimes our enthusiasm is not as it should be, your level of enthusiasm is always at peak level. Why is that?

Yvonne Cooper: Well –

Len Sipes: And you don’t get paid to do this.

Yvonne Cooper: No, I do not! No, I do not. You know, God has placed on my heart to help those who can’t help themselves. I’d like to call it the least, the limited, and the lost, and so I’m so excited that the Lord thought it not a robbery to choose me, even me, a former wretch like me, to help some other folk that have come through the trenches, because I too have gone through the trenches, having been there, done that, former felon myself, or felon, I guess I should say, and I’m just so glad that I had that experience, because had I not had that, I would not be doing the work that I do, so I’m excited.

Len Sipes: You wouldn’t be doing this work if you hadn’t had that experience, if you hadn’t been part of the criminal justice system, if you hadn’t been incarcerated yourself, you wouldn’t be doing it?

Yvonne Cooper: I’m pretty sure I would not have been involved. I thought of criminals as “those people,” but when I had the opportunity to be imprisoned myself as a convicted felon, I learned that I was more like them than different, so it’s because of that experience that I do what I do today.

Len Sipes: And I think one of the reasons we do the radio shows, and one of the reasons we do the television shows is sometimes to put a human face on the individual that we call an offender of what most people would simply refer to as criminal.

Yvonne Cooper: Sure.

Len Sipes: Because they read the newspapers, they watch the evening news, and every day, there’s endless litany of people under supervision, or formerly under supervision doing terrible things to other human beings, and that’s how they derive their image of “criminal.” One of the things that’s always surprised me is that once you sit across from, again, I’ve been in the criminal justice system 40 years. I’ve worked with offender, people under supervision, or the offender population for a lot of those years. So I understand that they’re just, they’re no different from you and I.

Yvonne Cooper: Amen.

Len Sipes: There’s a certain point that once they get beyond their criminality, and once they get beyond their drug use, they’re pretty much not any different between you and I.

Yvonne Cooper: That’s right.

Len Sipes: Yet the average person carries that stereotype, and that stereotype sticks.

Yvonne Cooper: That’s right.

Len Sipes: And that’s one of the reasons why we don’t have the drug treatment. That’s one of the reasons why, in my opinion, one of the reasons why we don’t have all the programs we need.

Yvonne Cooper: Certainly, certainly. Oh, I agree with you 100%, Lenny, but it is because of people like me and programs that are out there, that think it necessary to help our population to return back to society as a whole person. They’ve had so many challenges, most times, even before they went in, and so certainly, they’re going to have an abundance of problems when they come home. We look at today’s times, the issue of jobs is so hard for Joe Q. Citizen, and it’s doubly hard for those that have been incarcerated. Not just jobs, but even housing, those kinds of things, and so it is very important, at this particular time, that we help those who have come home, and, you know, as you, I don’t need to say this to you, CSOSA being in place because of the fact that we don’t have a facility here in Washington D.C. –

Len Sipes: We don’t have a federal prison –

Yvonne Cooper: A federal prison, thank you so much, a federal prison.

Len Sipes: Offenders from Washington D.C. go to federal prison for the people, let’s look at this –

Yvonne Cooper: All over the country. And so, yeah. So I’m excited about doing this work.

Len Sipes: Louis Sawyer, you’re on parole. You’re under the supervision of my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. You’ve returned to the District of Columbia on February 9, 2010. That’s a very short amount of time ago. How long did you spend in prison?

LOUIS SAWYER: Well, first of all, I want to thank you, Lenny, for the opportunity that you’ve given to come and to speak to you and your listeners –

Len Sipes: And I thank you for participating.

LOUIS SAWYER: And I would like to say a shout out to your listeners.

Len Sipes: Well, there you go. There you go.

LOUIS SAWYER: Yes, and I came home after doing 25 years –

Len Sipes: It’s a long time.

LOUIS SAWYER: – on February 9, 2010, and I’m grateful unto God that he’s allowed me to come back to the city to be part of the re-entry of the returning citizens.

Len Sipes: But that’s, most people who’ve spent that amount of time in prison, who come back tell me that it is a really difficult process of spending 25 years in prison, and then come back. That’s, a lot of people find that almost impossible to do.

LOUIS SAWYER: Well, in my daily reading this morning, it talked about the IM out of impossible and making it possible. With God, all things are possible. So I am a firm believer that 25 years was like a time in which it was needed for me, as an individual, because I could have been dead in my grave and on my way to hell and have died in my sins, but I thank God, because he allowed me to go through that, and this being the 25 years that I served was a, chapter one in my book, to come out and to be a better citizen, to be a catalyst to those who are coming behind me to be able to be that individual, to circumvent all the negativity, and to make sure that things are better.

Len Sipes: Two things are crossing my mind. Number one, your faith. Obviously, you’re an individual of faith, and one of the things that I’ve found about a lot of people, if not most people, who cross that bridge, as I put it, from tax burden to taxpayer, a lot of it is faith. A lot of it is faith in a higher power, and to us as a federal agency, it doesn’t matter to us whether it’s Christianity, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the Muslim religion, it doesn’t matter if it’s Catholicism, it doesn’t matter. Most people who seem to do well express a sense of an allegiance, an alliance with God, and that helps them move through society, it helps strengthen them, and helps them deal with drugs, adversity, jobs, family, that sort of thing. Am I right or wrong?

LOUIS SAWYER: Well, let me concur with you on that, Lenny. There is a higher power, and it’s God Almighty in my life, and I also believe that family is essential, along with the church family, along with mentors, along with advisors, along with counselors that have given you, given me a support network, a foundation, and without these individuals, God being at the head, family and church family and mentors and counselors and advisors, then I could not have been in this successful realm in which God has allowed me to be so far.

Len Sipes: Now I do want to talk to you about these statistics about people coming back from prison because they’re not very good. A lot of people fail. A lot of people return to the criminal justice system outside of prison. So I do want to talk with you about that, but Yvonne, talk to me a little bit more about faith, and again, that’s a delicate issue for us. We’re a federal agency –

Yvonne Cooper: Certainly.

Len Sipes: – we have no interest in promoting any particular religion, but without the faith based volunteers, and without the individual religious convictions of the individuals who seem to do well, my fear is that many more people, many additional people coming out of the prison system would not succeed.

Yvonne Cooper: Certainly. Well, you’re absolutely correct. I have found, in my work, that as a result of a faith base, most people who succeed are those that have had that faith to hold on to, be it Christianity, be it Muslim, be it Catholic, it does not matter. The faith is the key element in my mind’s eye. Now as you know, I am a Christian, but I work with everybody, because the Bible tells that God would have not one to be lost, and so I’m excited when I’ve learned that somebody has held on to some kind of spirituality base, and they have the spirituality base. That makes all the difference in the world. I mean, you’re absolutely correct, and all those other components are important, but the faith piece is more important to me than anything else.

Len Sipes: You’re a pastor at Allen Chapel, AME Church.

Yvonne Cooper: Associate minister, yes.

Len Sipes: Associate minister. www.amamc.org, www.amamc.org is the website for the Allen Chapel AME Church in Southeast Washington D.C.

Yvonne Cooper: Yes.

Len Sipes: You know, most people who are either Christian or who are Muslim or who are Jewish don’t mentor to offenders. And it gets back to that larger issue of how society views people out of the prison system, and you know, if you hadn’t been, you said it yourself, if you hadn’t had the experience of being incarcerated yourself, you may not be mentoring to Louis today.

Yvonne Cooper: That’s correct.

Len Sipes: So we have this view, regardless of whether we’re churchgoers or not, that those people have committed horrible things, and they’ve harmed society, they’ve harmed their families, they’ve harmed other people, and you know, they tell me, Mr. Sipes, look, quite frankly, I’d rather volunteer in the schools, or I’d rather volunteer to the elderly. I’d rather do other things besides mentor to offenders.

Yvonne Cooper: Well, that’s true. That’s unfortunate. I might have shared this with you before, Lenny, but for me, as a Christian, just, and I’ll just drop this on you for just a few moments, the prison system originated in the church, where God had put in place cities of refuge when people committed crimes, and so we move along the line, I believe it was the Mormons, Mormons or something like that –

Len Sipes: It, it was –

Yvonne Cooper: – started the first church –

Len Sipes: Oh, For the Love of Heavens, it was in Pennsylvania –

Yvonne Cooper: In Pennsylvania, right, and that’s still churchy, if you will, and so for me, it makes sense that the church would go back and make a difference. I mean, that faith piece is very necessary. You look at this. When we, when I was out on the street –

Len Sipes: The Puritans, I apologize.

Yvonne Cooper: The Puritans, that’s what it was.

Len Sipes: I knew I had it.

Yvonne Cooper: Absolutely. Absolutely correct. When I was out on the street, and Louis, too, most of us, we were out on the street, there were no four walls. I mean, the world was our, was there for us, and we can do anything we wanted to, but when we went to prison, it was nothing but four walls, and so we had to sit down and listen, because somebody was there talking about faith. It was the Muslims coming in, it was Catholics coming in, it was Christian Protestants coming in, and so there was somebody to listen, and they had our attention, and so consequently, some of us had a sense enough to listen, and praise God, when we came out, we were looking at the world in a different color eyes, with different color shades, if you will, and so we’re seeing things a lot different than we were, because before, I wasn’t saved myself, and so it was not until I went to prison that I gave my life to God, and so I had sense enough to, you know, to listen up. And so the faith piece is very important.

Len Sipes: Well it’s very dicey and delicate for an agency like ours, being a federal agency, to take on the faith based role, and even talk about the faith based role, because there’s always inevitably people who are going to object to it, succinctly saying, Leonard, you’re a federal agency, but it strikes me that the federal government, or any government entity is limited, is extremely limited in terms of what it is that we can do to reach the hearts and minds of individuals. What happens is, in terms of the faith community, is that this individual comes out of prison, and he or she is surrounded by individuals who help meet their basic needs, whether it be clothing, whether it be food, whether it be a place to live, whether it be fellowship, whether it be getting a suit for a job interview, whether it’s taking care of the kids, the faith community in Washington D.C. and the faith community throughout this country does that sort of thing, so not only do they provide services, but I can’t help but feel that, for so many people caught up in the criminal justice system, their lives have been very difficult. There’s a lot of abuse. There’s a lot of neglect. For female offenders, there’s an ungodly amount of sexual violence –

Yvonne Cooper: Certainly.

Len Sipes: – committed towards them. A lot of offenders are claiming mental health issues. If you sit and talk to the individuals caught up in the criminal justice system, and I’m not making excuses for their criminal behavior. If you do the crime, you do the time. Fine. So I’ll say that before the emails come in. But the issue is, is that they’re really struggling with life’s issues. Early age of onset for alcohol use, early age of onset for crime use, dropping out, drug use, dropping out of school early, criminal activity, these are individuals who desperately need what another faith based leader called “a gang for good.”

Yvonne Cooper: You talk about people before they go to prison, but I use Louis as an example, and he can speak to that himself. Louis, I’m not sure when Louis was saved, before he went to prison, or once he got there, but I have never seen a person that I’ve worked with to embrace the Lord in the way that he embraces him in this sense, that he puts his entire trust in God. I don’t care what it is, when he was looking for a job, when he was looking for housing, when he was looking for clothing, he was putting his entire trust in God. He is an example of a person who really has put all of his trust in God, and it’s because of his faith. Again, I understand, and I appreciate the fact that there are other religions out there as well, but I can only talk about Louis and Christianity right now, so Louis maybe should address that fact.

Len Sipes: And we are, we’re going to get together and spend probably the next half of the program with Louis, but wanted to reintroduce the program, because we are halfway through already. Ladies and gentlemen, this is D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. We’re doing a program on faith based mentoring. Back at our microphones, you have Reverend Yvonne Cooper of the Allen Chapel AME Church in Southeast Washington D.C., www.amamc.org. With Yvonne today is Louis Sawyer. Louis is on parole with my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. He’s been out after 25 years in prison, came out on February 9, 2010. Louis, the second half of the show is going to be almost exclusively yours. So you come out, and you’ve got this sense of faith. Where did you have this sense of faith? Where did you have this sense of faith? Where did that sense of faith come from?

LOUIS SAWYER: Well, Lenny, before I went in, I was a –

Len Sipes: In the microphone, please.

LOUIS SAWYER: I was a member of a church, but the church wasn’t in me, and when you have a religion, but you don’t have spirituality, or you’re missing something, and because of the fact of the Allen Chapel AME church with pastor Michael E. Bell, Sr. and Reverend Yvonne Cooper as the director of the missing links ministry, which is very, very insightful for those who are coming in and looking for employment, looking for housing, looking for clothing, looking for transportation, these are the items, the basic needs that our returning citizens are looking for, and when you have a church, members of the church, such as Allen Chapel AME, who extend their love, who extend their gratitude, extend a warm arm of affection, and they welcome you in, not concerned with your charges, not concerned how long you’ve been in prison, none of that, when they show the love of Jesus in their hearts, and they do for those who don’t even know you, and I experienced that the first Sunday I went, which is the first Sunday in March, and I’ve received that, and I thank God for the opportunity to be a part, and when you have that base, when you have that foundation, then how can you go wrong? And then you have people that’s going to surround you, that’s going to be a part of your transformation, and being reintegrated back into society.

Len Sipes: But I started –

LOUIS SAWYER: You think that.

Len Sipes: I started off the program with talking about Yvonne’s faith, Yvonne’s enthusiasm, Yvonne being up for this task, so many of us within the criminal justice system, there’s a certain point we’re beaten down by it. We’ve seen so many people who we’ve tried to help not allow themselves to be helped. We’ve seen so many people who we’ve emotionally been involved in go back to prison. It’s a difficult system. I mean, most, according to national statistics, most people go back to the criminal justice system, half go back to the criminal justice system, a higher percentage were re-arrested, but half go back to prison, either for technical violations, or a new crime. So the issue is, is that, you know, there’s just a sense of, you have your faith, what happened to everybody else?

LOUIS SAWYER: Well, let’s look at the statistics, since we’re talking statistics. We know that when you have an entity, such as family, and church families, which is the Allen Chapel AME Church, and they surround you, and they do what they can, we can only know that for myself, going back to prison is not an option for me. Whatever the circumstances is, God is ahead of me, and I believe that when you grasp that opportunity, when you grasp that knowledge, you know that there is no failure in him. So all of my help comes from him. So that is the basis, the core.

Len Sipes: Okay, and everybody else –

LOUIS SAWYER: Well, I can’t speak for everyone else, Lenny.

Len Sipes: But somebody, somebody has to! I mean, I’m struggling with this issue, because if it was as simple as you say it is, then the federal government would hire and pay, and there would go the enthusiasm, because it’s the enthusiasm of the volunteers that I’m really impressed by, but okay, then we solved the crime problem in this country. All we have to do is to fund volunteers and have sufficient numbers of volunteers, and all we have to do is to place some sort of religiosity and people inside the prison system, and we dramatically cut back on recidivism. I mean, somehow, some way, we’ve got to explain to the public, okay, for Louis, it works, and for a lot of other people, it does work, but for a lot of other people, it doesn’t, and how, what do we tell them?

LOUIS SAWYER: Well, first and foremost, you have to look at it in not being religiosity, if that’s how you –

Len Sipes: Yeah.

LOUIS SAWYER: If you look at it in that aspect, then you’re going to fail. But if you look at it from a spiritual perspective, because there is a difference between religion and spirituality.

Len Sipes: Okay, so your bottom line is God saves across the board, whether it’s a Muslim God or Christian God, or Jewish God, it’s that sense of faith that is going to be the making or breaking point in terms of people coming out of the prison system.

LOUIS SAWYER: It’s a belief factor. You have to believe that God sent his son, and because of that, the salvation is free to anyone who receives him as Lord and Savior. Now when you put your faith in him, Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then nothing else is going to deter you from that. Sometimes we have to let go and let God. Many of us tend to hold on to our own idiosyncrasies, but when you release that and believe that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we can ever ask or imagine, then we as a community can rally around that and believe that.

Len Sipes: But I’m going to go back to Yvonne and go back to you, Louis. Yvonne, the answer can’t be that simple. So, okay, everybody else doesn’t believe in God. Somehow, some way, there’s got to be a larger, greater explanation for why so many people return to the criminal justice system. I do, by the way, just my own personal belief is that if we were able to quadruple the number of volunteers, and if every individual who came out of prison was assigned, didn’t ask for, was assigned mentors, and there were multiple mentors, our recidivism rate would go down, but that’s not the case. There’s only so many of you guys, people have to ask for the mentors, a mentor/mentee relationship. It just strikes me that, is there a lesson for the rest of the criminal justice system in all of this?

Yvonne Cooper: Well, you know, you mentioned earlier that people, people get a little turned around or distressed that, as mentors, when so many people return back to crime, and I will say this to that, Lenny, I understand that, but you have to have a commitment and understand that, even if you just save one, and I know Jesus left the 99 to go after the one, so if you just save one, and so even if you just save one, and that person don’t go back, to me, that is a win-win situation. But with respect to what you said, I hear Louis, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. However, I broadened my thoughts in this sense that it is my job, in my mind’s eye, that I would want to make sure nobody goes back to prison, so I embrace the religion that a person has, whoever they believe in, be it Muslim or whatever, I embrace them, because it’s important to me, first of all, we want to introduce Jesus to folk, but you, I’ll use this as an example. I will tell a woman that I want to help her, so a woman who’s been in prison, I want to help her, and I can’t, she can’t see Jesus if she can’t feed her children. And so they want to see something first, and so I want these people to see me helping them, whatever religion they have, and then prayerfully, I can lead them to Jesus Christ, but first, I want to keep them whole, and I want them to stay home, and I want to keep them whole, so they need to have something to hold on to, and if it is the Muslim faith, well then so be it, let it be the Muslim faith. I don’t have a problem with that.

Len Sipes: I apologize for being so terribly callous after 40 years being involved in the criminal justice system, the faith movement within the re-entry movement is probably one of the most inspiring things personally that I’ve seen in my 40 years within the system. I embrace it fully. I embrace it wholeheartedly, but that’s not the point. The point is, is that we got Louis, and Louis is doing well. I’m just curious about what we do with everybody else who’s out there struggling with drugs, struggling with employment, struggling with themselves, struggling with their own histories, you know, it’s easy for me to say, well, heavens, find faith, but that’s not a magic wand that you can wave over somebody.

LOUIS SAWYER: Well Lenny, let me share something with you. This is very important point that Reverend Cooper, my mentor at the Allen Chapel AME Church, along with Pastor Bell, you don’t have that. If you had every church, every synagogue, every temple, every mosque that had a pastor, had an imam, had a faith based leader like that, then you would have, not the problems that you would have. I would have to say that I’m jumping out there, but I’d have to say that if they had shown, if others would show their concern as Reverend Cooper and Pastor Bell showed, then we might not have the recidivism rate as high as it is in the nation’s capital, but we have to look at –

Len Sipes: Or anywhere else in the country.

LOUIS SAWYER: This is true. But being that I’m in Washington D.C., I’m going to stay here. And the statistics will prove that when you give that person, that returning citizen, an opportunity to look to something, when you provide transportation, housing, employment, medical, clothing, when you show the love, when you extend the love, and when you let them know that, hey, it’s okay, I’m here for you, the mentoring aspect, and we really look at the terminology of mentoring, and when we look at it in its entirety, we must realize that it’s a whole encompass of things, it’s not just one phase, it’s the greet the person when they come in –

Len Sipes: It’s a gang!

LOUIS SAWYER: It’s a what?

Len Sipes: It’s a gang!

LOUIS SAWYER: It’s a gang?

Len Sipes: I mean the whole, there’s so many individuals caught up in the criminal justice system were raised by gangs. They raised themselves, and they’ve been surrounded by a gang structure. Now we have a gang for good. It is all embracing. It is a group. It is one for all and all for one. I mean, we have a criminal gang that’s dysfunctional and does a lot of destruction. We have a religious gang that does a lot of good.

LOUIS SAWYER: Well, let me say this also, Lenny, that there’s two words that I have used and have applied in my life from the time that I’ve received the sentence until the time I was released was the initiative and persistence, and if you take the initiative to do what is right, and you look towards being persistent in doing it, in being to the point where failure is not an option, and to touch base and to connect and to network with those organizations and those people who are about something, I’m sure that when you put 100% of your time and effort, 24 hours, 7 days a week into it, then you don’t have any time for negativity.

Len Sipes: Well, that’s true, but again, I’m, and we’re in the closing minutes of the program, and I do want to just, I guess, my never-ending concern, and will be the never-ending concern until the day I die, is I take a look at people like you, Louis, and I’m saying, okay, thank god for people like Reverend Cooper, thank god for Louis, but daggonit, why can’t we reach everybody else? And that’s the closing moments of the program. I just, Louis, are you doing well?

LOUIS SAWYER: Thanks be to God, I am doing outstanding.

Len Sipes: And so life is decent, life is acceptable, and your chances of going back to drugs and prison?

LOUIS SAWYER: Well, I’ve never done drugs.

Len Sipes: Okay.

LOUIS SAWYER: Never done drugs, but prison is not an option, but I’m very content with the way the life that God has allowed me to live, and even though I’m still looking for employment, but God is able, and when time comes for me to get employment, then that will be my time.

Len Sipes: And for those people listening in to this program in the D.C. area who have job offers contact us through the points that I’ve just given you. Reverend Yvonne Cooper, god, I love having you with these microphones –

Yvonne Cooper: God bless you. God bless you.

Len Sipes: I really enjoy just sitting across from you and having these discussions. Final thoughts?

Yvonne Cooper: Well, I thank you so much, Lenny, for the opportunity. When I contacted you about Louis, you were excited. I got you as excited as I was, and so I thought he would be a good candidate.

Len Sipes: I love success stories. I absolutely adore success stories.

Yvonne Cooper: He’s just awesome. I mean, he’s an awesome man of God, and I’ve, his faith is just extraordinary, and so I wanted others to hear about his faith, and I think he did a stupendous job here today.

Len Sipes: We’re out of time. Ladies and gentlemen, this is D.C. Public Safety. Our guest today, Reverend Yvonne Cooper of the Allen Chapel AME Church in Southeast Washington D.C., www.amamc.org. With her, Louis Sawyer, under our supervision at Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. If you have a job to give to Louis, now’s the time to get in touch with us. You can do so directly at Leonard, L-E-O-N-A-R-D – dot-sipes – S-I-P-E-S – @csosa.gov, or follow us on twitter, twitter.com/lensipes. We really appreciate all of your comments, most of you comment in the regular comment boxes, but we get the emails, and we get the twitter followings, and we are grateful, and we want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

Yvonne Cooper: Amen!

LOUIS SAWYER: Thank you, Lenny!

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Interviews with Offenders, Reentry, What Works

Women Offenders-DC Public Safety-220,000 Requests a Month

November 22, 2010 By Len Leave a Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/04/women-offenders-dc-public-safety-220000-requests-a-month/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today’s program is about women offenders and we have an event coming up on May 1st in Washington, D.C. dealing with women offenders. And this radio program is designed to provide clarity to that event and possibly promote the event a little bit.
At our microphones today, Dr. Willa Butler. Dr. Butler is a supervisory community supervision officer. She runs groups of women offenders. And we also have on our microphones Tracy Marlow. She is under–currently under the supervision of my agency, the court services and offender supervision agency. She’s about eight months away from her full release from our supervision. She’s also in the process of starting her own business. And so, to talk about women offenders, we’re going to have, again, Willa and Tracy to do that, but right for the moment, we’re going to be talking about the fact that we are extraordinarily grateful for the fact of all of your letters, emails, principally emails. You’re following us on Twitter. All the suggestions you provide, the criticisms, we really, really, really do appreciate them.
You can get in contact with us at media.csosa.gov and simply comment in the comments box. Or you can contact me directly, leonard.sipes@csosa.gov. Or you can follow us by Twitter, which is twitter.com/lensipes.
Back to our guest Tracy Marlow, and Dr. Willa Butler. Willa and Tracy, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Willa Butler: Thank you, Leonard.

Len Sipes: Tracy, I just want to–I’m sorry, we’re going to start off with Dr. Butler. Willa, now you’ve run groups of offenders here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, groups of women offenders, people under supervision. Give me a sense as to that process. Why do we have special groups for women offenders?

Willa Butler: Well, the group is Women in Control Again, WICA, which is a group started–it’s been maybe 12 years now, because we found out that women are different from men. And we knew there was a–we knew they were different, but we didn’t know why. So during studies, we found out that they needed a little more attention. Women are, I don’t want to say needy, but women have more serious problems than men. Not to say they are serious. They have the same problems, but women adapt differently than men. And when you look at the profile of the women or the characteristics, there’s usually child abuse, either sexual or physical abuse, substance abuse, little or no education, and a financial deficit there.
And then they grow up. And they grow up–they start off with I could say dysfunctional, because we all come a little dysfunctional. But then they end up somehow in the criminal justice system, because there was no one there to respond to their needs. And that’s why they end up there, because what they had to go or the way that they chose to go to make it through life was outside of the norm, or outside of society’s norm, which led them into the criminal justice system. In order to survive a lot of them, they end up doing prostitution or selling drugs or whatever have you. And that’s how they ended up in the system. And it seems like once in the system, it’s just so hard to get out of it.
And one thing that we notice is that now we need to hear from these women. And we need to answer their cry. What are the barriers? And that’s what we’re addressing in our group. What are the barriers? You say women in control again. I mean, we’re going to give them back the power that was taken from them at such an early age. And they develop low self esteem, low self worth and value. And you start getting into all their emotions and what exactly that they need. And now it’s the time that we’re coming to the fore front in trying to address these needs. And that’s what we’re all about.

Len Sipes: The statistics aren’t very good. Now when you compare the statistics regarding male offenders, female offenders, women have higher rates of substance abuse. Women have higher rates of mental health problems, but it’s really what you’ve just mentioned the astoundingly high rates of sexual abuse as children.
Now if you take a look at the data, you’ll find astoundingly high rates of abuse and neglect for both male and females, who come under our supervision, who come out of the prison system, come under our supervision, come to us on probation. But it’s the women offenders that really is startling in terms of that level of sexual abuse.
They come out of the prison system. And they have, in most cases, 70 percent of cases, I think it is, they’re mothers. So they’ve got to come back and deal with child related issues, and sometimes multiple children. So it’s just not all the issues dealing with male offenders, which is tough enough. But it’s all of the issues dealing with male offenders in terms of mental health, in terms of drugs, in terms of not having a high school education in terms of having a terrible job history, in terms of all of that. But it’s even more so with women offenders. And they’ve got to come out and raise and hopefully reunite with their children, and become mothers. Again, that is an extraordinarily difficult set of circumstances to overcome.

Willa Butler: Yes, it is, because a lot of times, the mothers never really raised their children. Then there’s some guilt feelings there. And there’s some hurt and angry feelings coming from the children. And then the mother have to adjust to that. And a lot of times, they’re manipulation in that relationship. And the mothers feel that they have to do what the children want them to do in order to gain their respect or gain some type of relationship with them again. And that can be detrimental, too, because we’re trying to live a better lifestyle, but yet we’re still going through a stage of manipulation in order to get the things that we had before we were incarcerated, which are our children. And then you look at the other things that’s related to that. We need housing, transportation, and like I say programs that would deal with the disorders. We need integrated programs that’s going to deal with substance abuse and mental health, because a lot of the women, they suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, you know? And that’s something that needs to be addressed. And when you couple that with using drugs, then you really have something on your hand and that’s what we want to look at today and talk about.

Len Sipes: Willa, you’ve been through this for how many years? You’ve been running these groups for women under supervision for how many years?

Willa Butler: Since 1995.

Len Sipes: And so you have seen literally thousands of women come through the criminal justice system. At what point does it simply become overwhelming? Because when I sit down, and I talk to women offenders, I’m simply overwhelmed by the complexity that they bring to the table. I mean, the guys are hard enough, but the women with the increased levels of substance abuse and mental health problems, employment issues, anger issues, issues stemming mostly from their own childhoods that to me would become simply overwhelming at a certain point.

Willa Butler: Well, doing this job, you have to be a passionate person and have compassion for this population that you’re working with. And knowing that I came away today, and I helped somebody, I gave somebody some good advice, it makes me feel good. Sometimes I do. I just want to throw up my hands and give up. But then, there’s always somebody that’s saying, Ms. Butler, if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be here today. Or Ms. Butler, you helped me today and it makes me want to go on and do what I’ve been called to do. It’s not an easy job, but it’s a job that I guess I’ve been chosen to do. And I guess I don’t know what to say. It’s just–it’s always tell my staff just do it, meaning just do it, meaning if you took time and thought about what you had to do, and the consequences of what you were doing, you wouldn’t do it. So you just go on and know that you are going to make it, and God is with you.

Len Sipes: But we do talk to more than just a couple women offenders, who have made it.

Willa Butler: Yes.

Len Sipes: An awful lot do end up making it. And awful lot do end up being taxpayers instead of tax burdens. An awful lot end up being the mothers of their children once again. They are productive. They are working. You know, this is just not about her. It’s about her children. So we’re not just talking about one human being. We’re talking about multiple human beings.
And you know, the fact that so many do make it is, I think, just a testimony, because you know, ordinarily, women involved in the criminal justice system, even in programs, they do better than the guys–

Willa Butler: Yes.

Len Sipes: –that go through the programs. And so to talk to one of our success stories today, Tracy Marlow. Tracy, you’re going to start your own business soon. You’re–what an ice cream truck?

Tracy Marlow: Well, I’m not going to start it. I have it.

Len Sipes: You have it.

Tracy Marlow: I’m about to buy a second ice cream truck.

Len Sipes: That is incredible. And so you’re your own business woman. You’re your own entrepreneur.

Tracy Marlow: Yes.

Len Sipes: That is so great. That’s so cool. I want to point out that Tracy is under our supervision for distribution of crack cocaine. She was–been locked up in the federal prison system 1991. She came out to us and been under supervision since 1995. Tracy, now give me a sense of your history? Everything that I just said to Willa, and Willa just said to me, is that realistic? Is that a accurate portrayal of women caught up in the criminal justice system?

Tracy Marlow: Oh, yes, it is, sir. Yes, it is. When I came out to my family, I had no one to stand and guidance because I was angry because I was locked up. I thought you all was the wrong people. And I was the right people. And we come with this idea, because we angry because our childhood. I was molested and raped ever since I was five years old. So–

Len Sipes: And that’s a tragedy.

Tracy Marlow: Yes, and long before drugs came along, I was sick. And my mother didn’t give me the help because she didn’t understand. She was an alcoholic. And my father was an alcoholic. So they did what they thought they was doing best was just sending off to school. Don’t tell nobody what happened in the house. Keep this a secret. This is a family secret. And that’s what I did. I kept things a secret, but it was killing me inside.

Len Sipes: But that’s exactly what happens.

Tracy Marlow: Yes.

Len Sipes: Women keep these things secret. Women don’t go out to get help. Girls don’t go out to get help and it just rips them apart internally.

Tracy Marlow: It makes us grow up to do bigger crime. And bigger crime became using drugs, selling myself, selling things out the house, abusing my kids, because I didn’t understand why. Then mental health came apart, depression, not understanding that didn’t have a coping skill to cope with these things, because there was nobody to go to. It was nothing designed. You put your back out in the street and tell you to make it with your family. How could I make it if I don’t have the tools to make it with?

Len Sipes: Right.

Tracy Marlow: I need to have some guidance. I needed that.

Len Sipes: Right.

Tracy Marlow: But what held me on, I had some good parole officers. I’m going to say all them was good. It was me that wasn’t ready. And as I went on learning life, I got a job in 2002 at Greyhound. I still have some anger problems. I still was going back and forth, but I just believed in a God greater than myself. And people like Ms. Butler, Ms. White, some good parole officers, Ms. Wallop, they just stuck with me. They sent me to groups. They sent me to after care meetings. And that pulled me on, but a lot of us won’t take it, because we don’t believe in it, because we think it’s a setup. We think the system is trying to set us up.

Len Sipes: Well, I mean, considering everything, we’re not exactly the most believable people on the face of the earth. I mean, we’re there because we have to be there.

Tracy Marlow: Yes.

Len Sipes: We’re there because we’re paid to be there. And people just think that we’re just going to set them up. They don’t trust us. And they don’t trust their own families. They don’t trust their own friends. Why would they trust the criminal justice system for the love of heavens?

Tracy Marlow: And you’re right about that. And for a long time, I didn’t trust you. I really didn’t, but there’s so many programs you all got going now, but you need more. You need to have–when a person step out of prison, you sent him to the halfway house. You need to have something when they step out into their family. Counseling, groups with their family, the way to welcome them back with their kids. You just send them out to failure, because they go home and they’re not taking their kids, because they didn’t know how to take their selves. So how could you send me back to three kids, but no home?

Len Sipes: Most of the criminal justice systems in this country do not have programs for either men or women. Most–in most states, I mean, there was just research the other day that what are we saying, 70 to 90 percent of offenders caught up in the criminal justice system have a substance abuse background?

Tracy Marlow: Yes.

Len Sipes: 11 percent get treatment. 11 percent. And we’re not talking about treatment designed specifically for that person. We’re just talking about treatment of any kind. So 11 percent.
So what we’re saying is is that 89 percent of people caught up in the criminal justice system, who end up in the prison system, who have substance abuse backgrounds don’t get drug treatment. So people, number one, need to understand, who are listening to this program, that the vast majority of offenders don’t get the programs they need to make that transition from prison out into the community. They should be getting these programs in the prison system, correct, Willa and–

Willa Butler: Yes.

Len Sipes: That should seamlessly follow them in the community. But there aren’t programs for most offenders in most places in this country, whether it’s employment, whether it’s substance abuse, whether it’s mental health. We, because we’re federally funded, do a lot better than most. But even our programs as far as I’m concerned are not sufficient in terms of the sheer number. For instance, we have 25 percent funding for 25 percent of the most heavily addicted individuals in terms of providing them with really good substance abuse therapy. What about the other 75 percent?
So we struggle with that every single day, as most parole and probation agencies struggle with it. I mean, the rest are taken care of either by the District of Columbia or the Veterans Administration, or faith based organizations, but you see my point. The point is is that programs really aren’t there for people caught up in the prison system and they’re really not there throughout the country for women who come out. Now why is that? Either one of you can chime in. Why don’t we have those programs?

Tracy Marlow: Because somebody need to speak and tell them, let them know. It need to be known. If it’s one person, we could catch her, one, that’s a fight–it’s a fight for. But if nobody knows, and we don’t believe, but if you put something out there, and we could see it, then might one or two will come along.
If I say one, another will come. If I get two, another will come. All of us is not going to make it, so who could choose which ones are? So let’s help them all.

Len Sipes: Okay, but–

Tracy Marlow: Let’s help them all with more programs, more designs for this here. Teach us while we in jail about family meeting, family planning. Teach us. Your carcerate person, and then you send them back out. Teach them why they in there. And teach them while they out. Make programs. They make everything else up. They send rockets to the moon. Help make more programs. Do something.

Len Sipes: Our guest today halfway through the program, and we’re really rocketing through this. Sometimes, Willa, I–when we do these programs, I’d rather them be an open ended program. So you know, we don’t have a time limit reintroducing, I guess, Dr. Willa Butler, supervisory community supervision officer for the court services and offender supervision agency. My agency, she runs groups for women offenders. Tracy Marlow has been on our supervision since 1995. And she has started her own business, too, and bought her second ice cream truck. Tracy is an example of what programs do in terms of helping human beings cross that bridge from prison into the community.
I’m going to go back to the same question, and because I hear what you’ve said, Tracy, but again, there’s got to be an explanation as to why people–why if I just described the fact that there aren’t enough programs, or aren’t nearly enough programs throughout this country. I–is it what, prejudice against people caught up in the criminal justice system, the fact that people are saying to themselves, hey, let’s send the money to the schools, let’s send the money to the elderly, let’s not give it to the offenders. They’re the ones who have caused us all this grief. Why should we give them any money? What’s the reason why we don’t have the programs we need?

Willa Butler: Well, one reason, when you look at history, women were not–were looked on as not being intelligent enough to commit crimes. So therefore, they were not thought about as being criminals. And as they began to get in the criminal justice system, only back in 1998 when the drug trafficking laws were increased, that women really started going to prison more and more. And then, we come out with–we have a deficit in a sense, because we don’t have anywhere to put these women or what to do with them.
But they were going through a treatment modality that was designed for men. And like we said, women are different. So now we see the difference. And now we have a–we’re trying to develop a treatment modality that’s more designed for women that’s going to address all of their needs and not just part of their needs. When I say part, just a substance abuse. We need to address the substance abuse, the mental illness, the spiritual aspect of the person, the emotional aspect. And not only that, to integrate it so that their children are involved. We need programs where when the women comes out and goes to treatment, her children can go with her, because a lot of times, when women are in treatment, or when they’re away from their children, their mind is on their children. And therefore, they can’t really concentrate on what they need to do, because part of them is thinking about what are their children doing, especially if the parents or someone from home is calling them, and telling them that Johnny or Sue is acting up, etcetera, etcetera. What am I going to do? The first thing they’ll want to do is leave the program. Sometimes they do. And then what–they’re right back in the system again, because it’s a violation.

Len Sipes: I ask you this question every time you’re on these microphones in front of these microphones, Willa. If we had, and Tracy, you’re more than welcome to chime in on this as well, if we had sufficient programs for women offenders, because women caught up in the criminal justice system always do better than men if you put the programs in place. The question becomes if we had all the programs in place, the woman goes to prison, she gets substance abuse counseling, she gets mental health issues, she gets parenting classes, she gets employment readiness, or they train her for a job. She gets her GED. She comes out to a parole and probation system, where all of that is continued, but it’s continued in the community. Your mental health issues, your mental–your substance abuse issues, your trailing issues. And eventually, the idea behind all of this is that the majority of the people who we try to supervise and assist go in and start being reunited with their kids. They start taking care of their kids. They start becoming taxpayers. If we had all of that in place, and none of that exist anywhere in this country. There are different states who are doing a better job than others in terms of trying to do that, but if you had all that in place, what percentage of women under supervision do you think would be successful? Willa, start–you start first.

Willa Butler: I would–I believe–I’m going to say 60 percent. I really do believe that, because they have a better start in trying to live their life again. In other words, they have substance. They have something to bring to the table, something that I can do, something that’s going to build me up, and let me know that I can do this thing. And I’m already pretty much got a great start. And then I can come out with a job, with a place to stay, be able to take care of my children, and feel worthy of what I’m doing because a lot of times, when they come home now, they’re right back in the situation. They’re in a situation. They’re living with someone who they have to depend on. And when you have to depend on someone else, it puts you in a precarious situation, because what, you’re vulnerable. You have to do what they want you to do. But when you have your own, your name on the lease, this is mine, it builds your self esteem and your self worth up. And you can do better. I believe you can.

Len Sipes: Tracy, do you believe the majority of people, women caught up in the criminal justice system, if they had these programs both in prison and in the community, what is your percentage of women who would make it, who would not go back to the criminal justice system, take care of their kids, and end up paying taxes?

Tracy Marlow: I’m going to go a little higher than 60. I believe about 70.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Tracy Marlow: And the reason I say that, because I’m a woman of such, that I’m just that person, that if there’s more out there, what helped me to grip on, I just believed in something. Somebody told me something, and I just stuck to it and believed in it. But it took me many years for that. So if there’s more set out, more women will gravitate to it, because women are caregivers.

Len Sipes: Right.

Tracy Marlow: We are caregivers. So if we don’t break this cycle with these children to let them know that they don’t have to do what we did, the world will get better. It will be more programs. We’d get home for these children, because self esteem is a big issue, too. If we don’t have self worth, we are filled zero. We got to believe that you could buy ice cream truck and start your own business. You could be a president of the United States.

Len Sipes: And that is a foreign concept to the vast majority of women caught up in the criminal justice system.

Tracy Marlow: Yes.

Len Sipes: Right? They’re nowhere even near that sense of themselves.

Tracy Marlow: No, they’re never nowhere near.

Len Sipes: So if you have an individual who’s been sexually abused, who’s been neglected as a child, and many cases, the women I’ve talked to repeatedly so, they come out of that set of–I mean, I–you can take a person, regardless of their circumstances, regardless of their race, regardless of their income, regardless of who they are and what they are, just being repeatedly sexually violated. Give them every other benefit on the face of the earth. Just take that particular factor. And they will struggle throughout life in many, many, many instances. In other words, they will use drugs. They will have very, very–

Tracy Marlow: Yes.

Len Sipes: You add that to everything else that people who get caught up in the criminal justice system go through in terms of dropping out of school, in terms of not having a job history, in terms of an extraordinary low level self esteem, in terms of poverty, if you put all that together, the cards are so heavily stacked against you, that it seems almost inevitable that you will fail.

Tracy Marlow: Yes. You’re set for failure. It’s a setup for failure when you have all that stacked against you. All this is stacked against you. And in the side, you say you can make it. Give me some materials to make it with. Give me some programs. Give me a job. Give me a place. Start me out with a corner. I’m not asking for a mansion. Give me a little place with my three bedroom for my kids, a one bedroom. Give me something to start and see what I do with it. Give me a chance. Make more programs. Everybody might don’t be successful as I did. I’m coming out of it in eight months.

Len Sipes: But yours wasn’t a straight success.

Tracy Marlow: No, mine wasn’t straight success, because–

Len Sipes: I mean, you–

Tracy Marlow: –it’s still a fighting matter. But I have a place. I came out and got a place, got a job. First time I ever had a job 2002. I’ve never worked, because nobody would give me a chance to work. They wouldn’t hire criminals.

Len Sipes: Because of what?

Tracy Marlow: They wouldn’t hire criminals.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Tracy Marlow: Women criminals.

Len Sipes: All right.

Tracy Marlow: You know, we didn’t talk strong enough. They didn’t–oh, what? They’ll push us to the side. But it was just that one person on this job, this one person. I’m going to give you a chance. All jobs don’t do that.

Len Sipes: Who gave you the chance, by the way?

Tracy Marlow: Jeff Biebenton gave me a chance at Greyhound.

Len Sipes: At Greyhound.

Tracy Marlow: Gave me a chance. And it was the day after they hired people. It was finished. It was over with, but I called him. And he said come in. Just come in. You didn call me so much, come in. And I came. And he did it. He opened the door for me. And I didn’t let him down. I became a good worker and one of the best workers. You know, but somebody gave me a chance, but I didn’t believe in myself. I had to build it and believe in myself. I got one child at a time. My mother wouldn’t give me all my kids. Thank God for grandmothers. My mother gave me one child at a time. Every year, she gave me another one.

Len Sipes: How many children?

Tracy Marlow: I have five.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Tracy Marlow: She gave me one at a time until I became strong. And she knew I can handle it.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Tracy Marlow: Then she went on to heaven. And I’ve been fighting the battle every since, having good people like Ms. Butler, Ms. Wallop, Ms. Tracy White just holding me on. But every woman don’t get that.

Len Sipes: Well, that’s my point.

Tracy Marlow: Every one don’t get it.

Len Sipes: That’s my point.

Tracy Marlow: So we got to make something better, because everybody–if we don’t break this cycle for the children, then the system going to be bigger with a lot more women in jail.

Len Sipes: And the research is pretty clear that women, I’m sorry, the children–

Tracy Marlow: The children.

Len Sipes: –they have higher rates of criminal involvement.

Tracy Marlow: The younger girls now are getting–they are going to jail left and right. They are–I know they’re high, because I go and do volunteer work. And the girls in the youth places are more than the guys now, because the parents can’t break the cycle. The children are mimicking what the parents did.

Len Sipes: Right.

Tracy Marlow: Their mothers.

Len Sipes: Well, they’re doing exactly what they know.

Tracy Marlow: What they know.

Len Sipes: And that knowledge base is not very good.

Tracy Marlow: No.

Len Sipes: No. Willa?

Willa Butler: And that’s true. And that’s what we need to do is break the cycle of pain, because girls are ending up in the criminal justice system more now. And they’re starting off early. And it’s like they need the identity, and say–they’re trying to identify with each other and with the wrong peer groups.

Len Sipes: Yes.

Willa Butler: And that’s the problem that we’re seeing. And the sad part about it is the characteristics are the same. A lot of them, they’re running away from home because they have been abused, you know, molested at home. And that’s the beginning of it. They run away. And then somebody pick them up. And they start them out to prostitution at an early age.

Tracy Marlow: Yes.

Willa Butler: And that’s how some of them get in the criminal justice system, because they’re predators out there more ways than one. And they’re looking at these children. When, you know, that’s what they’re there for. They’re designed to get them.

Len Sipes: And this is happening in every day in every city throughout the United States. And yet there’s no collective scream. There’s no collective outcry. There’s no collective sense of just sheer and unadulterated anger that this happens to human beings day in, day out. And then, they get caught up in the criminal justice system.
But we do have society that at certain points, there–this is almost–people are too cavalier. They’re not carrying enough by in terms of what’s happening, in terms of the immense amount of child abuse that’s going on inside of homes. I mean, you know, Tracy, you have a sense of whether I’m right or wrong?

Tracy Marlow: Oh, you’re right, because how many kids are keeping it a secret, because I was told to keep it a secret? How many kids are getting molested and won’t tell because the parents told them not to tell? I’m one of them. I’m a victim of that. My mother said you don’t tell what goes on out this house. Keep it a secret. I was molested since five. And I kept it a secret.
But my secrets kept me going till I became uncontrollable. And now I’m crying out to the other ones. It’s not a secret, tell it. Tell somebody. Help, help. Get more programs. Get more groups. Talk one on one, a group, something, because these kids are going to mimic. And when you’ve been abused, you become abuser sometimes.

Len Sipes: Yeah, you do, because it’s what you know.

Tracy Marlow: It’s what you know.

Len Sipes: It’s what you know.

Tracy Marlow: Jesus.

Len Sipes: I mean, how many of my friends throughout my times, who have been children of alcoholics end up marrying alcoholics?

Tracy Marlow: Yes.

Len Sipes: It’s what they know. It’s their comfort level. And that comfort level is destructive.

Tracy Marlow: That’s what my mother and father did. They both was alcoholics. But they was functional. They worked. They worked every day, but they thought that was right, because they didn’t know better. They only knew what they was taught. So it’s not their fault. We got to break the cycle.

Len Sipes: We’re in the final minutes of the program. I need a quick answer from both of you. And, you know, every time we do these programs, Willa, I’m just, you know, shivering in terms of hearing from individuals like Tracy, who tell their stories so honestly and so passionately. It’s just–it absolutely blows my mind. I mean, I love doing these shows, because of the passion your folks bring to these microphones. But at the same time, it’s frightening to hear. And I want to say it over and over again that there’s not enough programs. And there’s just not enough caring on the part of the larger society. Final comments, Willa?

Willa Butler: That’s true, Leonard. I just want to say that we do need more programs out here for women, not only that we need more programs, but we need some preventive programs in the community where the mothers, the children, they can go and find refuge. And come together with their children.
If they had some type of counseling when this first happened as far as the rape and molestation was going on, that would prevent a lot of this. But I’m looking forward to our program that’s going to be this weekend, Saturday at the Temple of Praise and 700 Southern Avenue. And a lot of this will come out there. And I thank you for inviting us today.

Len Sipes: Well, Willa and Tracy, I want to thank you very much. Tracy, thank you very much for telling me your story. I’d love for you to come back six months from now and give me a sense as to where you are in terms of your own business. I am so enthralled. And, Lord, just listening to you, I just want to hug you, which I will do after the program. And just, you know, I think you’re the very epitome of what we in the criminal justice system can do, given the resources. I just thank God for your recovery and the fact that you’re out there, and the fact that you’re now helping others make it through.

Tracy Marlow: Yes.

Len Sipes: So God bless you for doing that.

Tracy Marlow: Thank you for having me.

Len Sipes: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very emotional D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. Our guest today, Dr. Willa Butler, supervisory community supervision officer from my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Willa, as you well know at this point, runs groups for women offenders. Tracy Marlow is a person under our supervision and she started her own business, her second ice cream truck.
Again, thanks to both of you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. If you want to comment about this program, any other program, give suggestions, comments, criticisms, the email directly to me is Leonard, leonard.sipes@csosa.gov. Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/lensipes. Or go to the website where all of these programs are, www.media.csosa.gov and simply comment in the comments box, as so many of you do. And please, everybody, have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Criminal Justice, Interviews with Offenders, Reentry, Women Offenders

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