New Report Shines Light on Women Inmates

When the report was released no one at the press conference said women prisoners aren't treated fairly and equally compared to male prisoners.

Nobody had to.

Page after page of the study makes that clear.

For example, male inmates receive life skills programs including anger management, parenting, domestic violence, and alcohol and drug treatment, among others.

At the women's prison in Goffstown, inmates get only religious services and access to a chaplain.

Another example is the vocational programs.

Women can take a class called office occupations, where they work on outdated computers.

Men get to chose from food service management, business education, building trades, small engine repair, auto body, auto mechanics, informational technology and horticulture.

Most female inmates have to deal with histories of domestic violence, mental illness, substance abuse or sexual trauma.

Yet at Goffstown, there are few state-funded services to address those problems.

So when those prisoners are finally released the report concludes it's often harder for them to succeed than it is for male prisoners.

All of those findings square with a 2003 National Institute of Corrections assessment.

And one of the report's authors, Terri de Langis, admits there is nothing new about any of it.

8:02 no one disagreed with our primary finding....everybody is on the same team, we've all come to the same conclusion so there is no excuse not to solve this problem.

de Langis says the point of the report isn't to reveal any dark secret...it's to build the political will to make change.

de Langis is the executive director of the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Women, the group that produced the report.

She and her co-authors believe the best way to address the problem is to provide decision makers with three recommendations.

TAPE
We need to collect better information about who these women are...how many kids do they have, where are they when they are in prison...for 20 ears we have been trying to solve this problem...we need to get the experts at the table and say how are we going to strategicially plan for this population and third we need to invest in the staff. not let it get lost in the huge sea of DOC...we need someone paying attention to that population alone.

The report also looks at the economics of incarceration.

According to state figures, it costs about 24 thousand dollars a year to house a female inmate.

If the woman has a child who winds up in foster care as a result, tack on another 25 thousand dollars a year.

The report argues that the state should be helping these women when they are behind bars and away from the vices and relationships that got them in trouble.

Instead the reports authors say the state is wasting its opportunity resulting in many of the women returning back to prison.

As a result many of the women find themselves back in prison, costing 24 thousand dollars a year.

Despite the economics, Department of Corrections Commissioner Stephen Curry did not want to give an official reaction to the report.

But he did say that he wants to get away form an economic analysis of the system based solely on efficiencies.

TAPE:
We got where we are right now b/c we were very interested in efficiency. And so we have allowed that to guide us, and for very good reason, the state is always looking for an opportunity to generate efficiencies. But now we have to look at the effectiveness side of the equation and we've got to figure out what it is we are doing good before they go back out into the population.

Curry said he would release a formal assessment of the report in the next month or two.

And that announcement, says some observers, is emblematic of the problem.

State officials have known for some time that femal prisoners don't receive adequate services.

But for some reason, the issue always ends up on the back burner.

Report co-author Betsy Paine says that lack of attention is understandable...to a point.

Women make up only 10% of the entire prison population.

TAPE: probably the place you would have a prison riot is in the men's prison. So you are going to address those security issues b/c they are more pressing. And in that way we are against the wall. You have to put out ht efire, and our job will be to say there is a bigger picture here.

And that bigger picture, Paine says, is equality under the law.

Executive Councilor Ruth Griffin has seen this problem of inequality fester over the past twenty years.

And nothing has been done.
But she says, this report, coupled with the energies of others in the state, will prevent this report from just sitting on the shelf and gathering dust.

TAPE
Esso says you got the tiger by the tail, well I think the women on the status of women and a few other women in the state have the tiger by the tail and they aren't going to let it go this time.

But advocates say, if somehow that grip does slip, some eager lawyer may be interested in taking the state to court.

For NHPR News, I'm DG.