America's Other Family-Separation Crisis
The New Yorker by Sarah Stillman
November 5

... America imprisons women in astonishing numbers. The population of women in state prisons has increased by more than eight hundred per cent in the past four decades. The number of women in local jails is fourteen times higher than it was in the nineteen-seventies; most of these women haven’t been convicted of a crime but are too poor to post bail while awaiting trial. The majority have been charged with low-level, nonviolent offenses, such as drug possession, shoplifting, and parole violations. The result is that more than a quarter of a million children in the U.S. have a mother in jail. One in nine black children has a parent who is, or has been, incarcerated. ...

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In Iowa, A Commitment to make prison work better for women
NPR by Joseph Shapiro
October 17, 2018

​The warden at the women's prison in Iowa recently instructed her corrections officers to stop giving out so many disciplinary tickets for minor violations of prison rules, like when a woman wears her sweatshirt inside out or rolls up her sleeves.
It's a small thing. But it's also part of a growing movement to reconsider the way women are treated in prison.
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Called "gender-responsive corrections," the movement is built on a simple idea: that prison rules created to control men, particularly violent ones, often don't work well for women. That women come to prison with different histories from men — they're more likely to be victims of violence, for example — and they need different rules.

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In Prison, Discipline Comes Down Hardest On Women
NPR by Joseph Shapiro, Jessica Pupovac, Kari Lydersen
October 15, 2018

​When Monica Cosby, Tyteanna Williams and Celia Colon talk about the years they spent as inmates at women's prisons in Illinois, their stories often turn to the times they would be disciplined for what seemed like small, even absurd things.

Cosby was playing Scrabble in her cell once when a guard asked what she was doing. She responded sarcastically: "What does it look like I'm doing?" He wrote her up for "contraband" (the Scrabble set) and for "insolence."

Williams got written up once when her cellmate, who had diabetes, passed out and Williams cursed at the officer she thought was too slow to help.

Colon got a disciplinary ticket for "reckless eye-balling." She had made a face when a corrections officer gave her an order. She says she ended up in solitary confinement as a result.

"You could get a ticket for anything," Colon said.

Especially, it turns out, if you're a woman.

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Former Logan inmate sues over alleged sexual assault
State Capitol Bureau By Doug Finke 
​September 21, 2018

A former inmate at the Logan Correctional Center says she was sexually assaulted by a prison employee and that prison staff knew of the assaults but did nothing to stop them. The allegations are laid out in a federal lawsuit filed Monday in Springfield.

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Congratulations Monica Cosby long time supporter of UUPMI working to ensure other women are never faced with prison.
Chicago Tribune  ::  July 18, 2018   
ARTICLE: 'Prison is not where women need to be'

​The number of women locked up in Illinois prisons could be cut in half under an ambitious proposal by reform advocates who argue that the corrections system has largely ignored the needs of female inmates.
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Raising babies behind bars
A bold experiment in parenting and punishment is allowing children in prison. But is that a good thing?
Washington Post: By Justine Jouvenal

Prison nursery programs remain rare nationwide, but eight facilities in as many states have opened them amid dramatic growth in the number of incarcerated women. The bold experiment in punishment and parenting has touched off a fierce debate. ...

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A Transgender Inmate Says She Was Raped
Time : By Kathleen Foody May 3, 2018

(DENVER) — A transgender inmate who is suing Colorado’s corrections agency says she was raped at a men’s prison hours after a federal judge denied her request to block the prison from keeping her in a disciplinary unit, according to court records and the woman’s attorney.

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For Trump's Evangelical Advisers, Prison Reform Becomes a Front-Burner Issue
NPR :: Sarah McCammon
...
That idea – that redemption is possible, even in prison – is a central part of the Christian belief system, said Johnnie Moore, an evangelical leader and informal adviser to President Trump who attended the summit. "I'm not sure that for a number of years it was sort of considered a political issue," he said in an interview with NPR. "It was more just an issue of justice."

Moore is among leading evangelicals who are supporting the FIRST STEP Act, which focuses on improving prison conditions for pregnant inmates, and offers a path to possible early release for prisoners who earn credits for good behavior. The plan does not tackle many of the larger goals of criminal justice reform advocates, such as reducing or eliminating mandatory minimums for non-violent drug crimes.
...
​Jesselyn McCurdy of the American Civil Liberties Union said she welcomes evangelical support for prison reform in principle, but worries the push for this legislation could squander an opportunity for more substantial reform. Among other concerns, she said the plan relies too heavily on releasing prisoners into halfway houses, which are underfunded.
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“These are not tears of sadness; these are tears of peace.” “I came in here broken; now I am whole.”
These are things shared with us by some of the incarcerated women at Logan Correctional Center, in our first session of Telling Our Stories, Transforming Our Lives, the 12-session covenant group led by UUPMI. We finally, after a negotiation with the prison administration that was strung out over a couple of years, held our first session on January 6, 2018. A historic occasion! There were three of us there leading the session – Cindy Cotton, a volunteer from the UU congregation in Bloomington/Normal; the Rev. Karen Mooney, our UUPMI minister and executive director; and the Rev. Marcia Curtis (that would be me!), the president of the UUPMI board. For the next six months, at least two of us will be going into Logan every other week to lead sessions that we hope will continue to be transformational, not just for the incarcerated women, but for us as well, as we learn to see the world through their eyes.

We found, in our first session at Logan, that leading a covenant group session there is very different from leading a covenant group session at Cook County Jail. At Cook County Jail, there is a lot more chaos. There’s a lot of turnover among the incarcerated women, with the average stay being only about a month, and there’s a lot of turnover in the staff, with a whole new set of Correctional Officers (COs) every 90 days. When you’re in jail, you’re in a transitional space, physically and emotionally – waiting to be tried (because you couldn’t cover bail), or serving a short sentence (something less than a year). We’ve found that some women are there for longer periods of time, as much as a few years, while awaiting trial. But for the most part, the women who come to the covenant group sessions don’t know what’s going to happen to them next – when (or if) they’ll get out, whether they’ll be able to stay clean and sober (so far, the women we’ve worked with there are all in an addiction treatment program), whether their partner will wait for them, whether their children will be hurt by the separation. We’re delighted that we already have enough people signed up for our Circle Facilitator Volunteer Training, on either 2/10/18 or 2/24/18, that we think we’ll be able to go to offering the covenant group every week instead of every two weeks, giving women something to hang onto and to look forward to, something consistent where they know they will be treated with dignity and respect, and where their humanity will be recognized and honored. It matters!

For Moms In Prison, Distance Can Hurt As Much As Time
by Kim Bellware
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On board a pair of buses making the nearly three-hour journey to central Illinois from Chicago a week before Christmas, everyone has a number. The passengers are bundles of sleepy children, some accompanied by grandparents, who offer up a “one,” “three,” maybe “four.” The numbers represent the months ― and in some cases years ― since they have seen their mothers at the Logan Correctional Center.

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