Saving bonds: Evaluations don’t fit all, official says
By Alyssa Cashman
The Gazette
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Vanessa Doolin was leaving prison for the third time, this time after a yearlong sentence for conspiracy, when she joined Moving On in May.
At first, Doolin didn’t see how a group for female probationers and parolees would help her.
But now, as she nears the end of management courses and re-establishes a relationship with a daughter, Doolin has changed her mind.
“I definitely apply some of the things I learned,” Doolin, 36, said from her Cedar Rapids home. “Like being more assertive and not just accepting anything in relationships.” New grant money Iowa corrections officials are hoping to get would help the state give women who leave prison or go on parole the chance to go through programs like Moving On that take aim directly at women, those officials said. The programs are based on relationship issues women deal with, but men may not.
That kind of increased attention is vital because the number of women in Iowa’s prisons is growing, corrections experts say. Moreover, those officials say, women learn and react differently than men when leaving prison.
Moving On teaches women how to improve their lives and relationships, volunteer group facilitator Julie Havlicek said. Groups focus much of their time on relationships and dealing with others; unhealthy relationships are one of the key pathways to crime for women, corrections officials said.
“They come from all sorts of backgrounds,” Havlicek said. “Many of them come from abusive homes, they’ve been in abusive relationships. And I’ve seen a lot of extensive drug use.” Every Monday night, the women in Moving On gather around a table at the Hinzman Center in Cedar Rapids to discuss their lives and how they’ve dealt with incidents in the past week.
Everyone listens, giving advice intermittently.
Then they begin the session’s lesson. During one meeting, they split into groups to practice saying “no” in different scenarios.
They act out the situations for the class.
“We don’t always speak to the specific ways that women learn best,” Kim McIrvin, 6th District executive director for the Iowa Department of Corrections, said.
“They’re much more relational than men.” About 780 women are in Iowa’s prison system. This number is expected to keep increasing by 2016, when corrections officials think women will make up about 10 percent of Iowa’s prison population.
Anticipated programming moves to deal with that trend would solidify a national leadership role Iowa officials feel they have in women’s corrections, McIrvin said.
One new development in women’s corrections that probably will be used in Iowa, starting in 2009, is a more gender-oriented risk assessment that gauges a woman’s chance of re-offending. The questions are geared toward factors that affect women more than men,such as their level of perceived safety at home.
“Evaluations are usually developed for men,” McIrvin said.
“But they’re validated on both men and women.” Corrections workers are being trained in these new tactics, and also are being taught how best to work with and motivate women.
Brenda Arnold, 42, recently graduated from the group in the end of October along with Doolin, but she’s afraid to leave the group’s comforts.
She feels that way now despite having doubts when startingin the group.
“I didn’t think I fit in with these other women,” Arnold, of Cedar Rapids, said. “I never had a life of violence.” A misdemeanor domestic abuse charge landed her in the group. The 16-week class changed her, she said.
“I was a little judgmental and naive,” Arnold said.
“But the class has taught me to be a little more honest with myself and to be true to myself.” Renee Trout, 30, also of Cedar Rapids and given probation for a misdemeanor domestic abuse charge, graduated at the same time as Arnold, and said she uses skills from the group in her daily life.
“The other day I was getting really, really pissed and I started going through the steps of anger in my head,” Trout said.
“I felt like an idiot, but it works.”
Copyright 2008 The Gazette