Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
CHEYENNE – A group of researchers at the University of Wyoming is collaborating on an effort to bring greater educational opportunities to inmates at the Wyoming Women’s Center in Lusk.
For months now, the Wyoming Department of Corrections has been working with UW on what has been dubbed the Wyoming Pathways from Prison Project. The project follows a study conducted by the researchers between December 2014 and August 2015 in which they interviewed current and former female inmates about their prison experiences.
In all, the researchers interviewed 71 women, 43 of whom were inmates at the time and another 28 who were released on parole.
Lead researcher Susan Dewey said she was prompted to do the study based on her previous work helping women leave the sex industry in Denver.
“As I did that work more intensively, I became more and more involved in the criminal justice system,” Dewey said. “The women I worked with were trapped, sometimes in a life they were involved in since birth. They were raised, sometimes in foster care, with no one to guide them and support them,” Dewey said.
“The stigma of having any criminal conviction at all was a big roadblock to getting stable housing or any kind of work at all,” she added. “And I started to think really critically about what the situation might look like in Wyoming in a predominantly rural context.”
During her team’s interviews in Lusk, Dewey said she found many of the same patterns, which she detailed in her final report: “Most women described the events that led to their incarceration as having taken place in the context of financial need, restricted work opportunities, rural challenges, and limited resources available to treat compromised mental and physical health and meet basic needs.”
The report also highlighted the impact of limited work opportunities, “particularly in isolated rural areas, where male-dominated resource extraction industries offer the only jobs that pay a living wage,” which Dewey said only poses further problems for women who have been incarcerated, given the stigma associated with a felony record.
And while the Wyoming Department of Corrections offers a range of substance abuse treatment services and educational programs, including mandatory GED classes for anyone without a high school diploma, Dewey said she believes UW can help to build upon that.
Betty Abbott agrees. Abbott is the correctional education programs manager for the Department of Corrections, and she has been collaborating with Dewey’s team in providing additional classes for female inmates.
“There’s a lot of insecurity about going out and being on their own, and that’s tough,” Abbott said. “You walk out of prison with very little, and the more opportunity you have to learn skills, the better off you’re going to be.”
To that end, Dewey said she envisions UW’s work at the women’s prison emphasizing empowerment as much as it does education. Given the situations female inmates often come from, she said, building their self-confidence may be just as important as developing their skills when it comes to actually finding work on the outside.
For example, Dewey said, “There was a pretty tight cohort of women who were there because of domestic battery issues. They really wanted to have a group where they could process those issues – and for the women getting out, education so they would not get back into those situations again.”
Dewey said she and her team have already come up with some possible courses that could address those dual needs of education and empowerment. This spring, she said, educators plan to begin teaching a course built around memoir writing at the women’s prison.
“These are women who pretty systematically have been deprived of their ability to speak, and they have important things to say,” she said. “I’m going to take up to 10 of our UW students and faculty and we will be there working with the women one on one to help them tell their stories.”
As early as April, Dewey said she also hopes to develop a list of UW faculty members who will begin rotating assignments to the prison, to teach a wide range of topics.
“We’ve already had a core group formed of about 30 of us, everything from theater and dance to math,” Dewey said. “But it could be as basic as Introduction to College, just to get the intimidation factor reduced.”
Ultimately, Abbott said she would like to see UW offering inmates classes that carry college credit, but she acknowledged that could still be a ways off. Additionally, UW will need to find a way to fund those faculty that do make the journey to Lusk.
“There is some movement nationally to look at offering Pell grants to offenders, but that’s probably another six to eight months off,” Abbott said. “My goal is to help these ladies get back on track and be self sustaining when they get out. And if there’s opportunities for UW to help these women when they walk out the door, I think that’s a wonderful way to do it.”
Copyright 2016 Wyoming Tribune-Eagle