Arresting Hope

Women Taking Action in Prison Health Inside Out

Ruth Elwood Martin, Mo Korchinski

• Publisher: Inanna Publications
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781771331586
• eBook ISBN: 9781771331593
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Arresting Hope reminds us that prisons are not only places of punishment, marginalization, and trauma, but that they can also be places of hope, blessing even, where people with difficult lived experiences can begin to compose stories full of healing, anticipation, communication, education, connection, and community. The book tells a story about women in a provincial prison in Canada, about how creative leadership fostered opportunities for transformation and hope, and about how engaging in research and writing contributed to healing.

The book includes poetry, stories, letters, interviews, fragments of conversations, reflections, memories, quotations, journal entries, creative nonfiction, and scholarly research. Out of multiple and diverse possibilities involving many people, Arresting Hope is focused on five women—a prison doctor, a prison warden, a prison recreation therapist, a prison educator, and a prison inmate—and their stories of grief, desire, and hope.

Flashback 1: Life in Prison

(Win2H meeting, November, 2010)

“THANKS FOR COMING. We thought we’d get together, and talk about the things in prison that we liked. You know, some of the events, what you remember, things that made you laugh. So, let’s start with diet and building the vegetable gardens.”

“When I first went to prison in 2004, one of the first things that I noticed was all the bread women are fed. When women started to complain about the unhealthy eating habits and all the weight that comes from eating way too much bread, we took this concern to our monthly inmate coordinators meeting.”

“I couldn’t believe how much weight I put on! None of the clothes I was wearing when I came into prison fit when I left. I had to stuff myself into my jeans.”

“It was a real downer.”

“I couldn’t believe how much work we had to do.”

“Most of us worked in the horticulture program.”

“Yeah, we were responsible for taking care of the grounds inside and outside the prison.”

“Remember how we started our own vegetable garden, right from scratch, building the raised flower beds, to hauling wheelbarrows of dirt to fill them?”

“Yeah! My arms ached for days!”

“The prison had one greenhouse building and one cold shed where we learned how to start vegetable and flowers from scratch. We sure worked hard together—the entire horticulture crew—and soon the flower beds were ready to plant.”

“We had so many different vegetables.”

“Lettuce, peas, corn, beans, tomatoes.”

“And a variety of herbs, I didn’t know half of them!”

“They added a healthier flavour to our meals.”

“It was fun watching everything grow. I will never forget this, everyone had so much fun. Everyone was so happy!

“Yeah, but it sure sucked when it rained.”

Putting Responsibility into the Women’s Hands

Inmate Committee Meeting

MO KORCHINSKI

ONE OF THE INITIATIVES in ACCW was the Inmate Committee Meeting. Traditionally, Corrections see inmate meetings as potential for trouble. They want to control the agenda to reduce inmates’ power. Each living unit rep worked with Alison (the recreation therapist) to come up with the agenda for the meetings. I became the “inmate coordinator” and planned for a monthly meeting with the wardens and staff to bring to the table ideas women had for the prison. With the unit reps, I would put together the agenda for each month’s meeting. Alison would facilitate the meeting. All the white shirts (wardens) and two people from each living unit would meet once a month. Women would come up with some ideas for change and put together proposals and we would all sit down and discuss them as equals—not Corrections versus inmate.

We brought many different issues to the table. We talked openly about each item on the agenda and why we thought we should have something or change something. The wardens would offer their ideas and we would give ours. Most of the time, the warden would ask us to provide research to back up our ideas.

Our opinion mattered. Our voices were heard. It was the difference between earning respect and demanding respect from us. If after a good discussion, the result was “no,” then there was a good reason for it and in that case the women accepted the decision. The meetings created a culture that supported healthy collaboration and communication.

Among the things we first requested were hair dryers and curling irons. I remember saying in the proposal that having wet hair causes women to get sick but, apparently, that is a myth. So, the next monthly meeting we redid the proposal and came up with the reason that if we look good, we feel good, and when we feel good, we are happier. And we got the hair dryers and curling irons for each unit.

ACCW was open to change and the women took pride in their surroundings. A community was starting to form inside the walls of the prison.

We put in proposals to have events where women could have fun and come together as a community. One of the biggest complaints from many women was our diet. People coming off drugs need a high carb diet, but eating so many carbs led to women putting on lots of weight. This gave us an idea of how to incorporate exercise with fun: sports day. This was out first big event. Learning to have fun and finding my inner child that was lost for so many years was so new to me. I laughed and felt content with who I was becoming, and I saw what life can be like without drugs and other substances to numb me. This event was a big success, and we started to plan other weekend events.

After most of the landscaping was done around the grounds of the prison, we also thought about growing fresh vegetables for healthy eating instead of having bread all the time. The prison bought two greenhouses where we started to grow vegetable plants from seed, and learned how to nurture and care for them. We took pride in what we were doing and we enjoyed the vegetables. We also built thirty raised flower beds. We hauled many wheelbarrows with dirt to fill the beds as well as wheelbarrows with gravel to fill in the pathways. Lots of hard work but the result was so worth it: fresh vegetables.

To help raise money for the Inmate Committee, we put on a barbeque where women could buy hotdogs and hamburgers. We made a large home-grown salad as a side dish, a nice treat compared to eating the food that we served every day in the kitchen.

We did more barbeques, scavenger hunts, volleyball tournaments, and Easter egg hunts when women ran around the prison grounds trying to find eggs. Even the crows in the air joined the hunt, flapping around with shiny, foil-wrapped, and coloured eggs in their beaks.

The more we gave people opportunities, the more they valued the opportunities and responded. The more we gave responsibility for doing things to the women themselves, and the more we talked to the staff about our plans, the better the situation got.

—Brenda Tole, Warden

Most of us only knew happy and angry, all the feelings in between were foreign to us. ACCW wouldn’t pu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright Notice
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Arresting Hope
• An Invitation to Readers
• Before Prison
• Paragraphs of Passion1
• Doctor’s Journey
• I’m An Addict
• Child Not Wanted
• My Story
• My Addiction
• Superheroes with No Power
• My Choices
• Tears of Hope
• Incarceration
• Lost
• Arrival
• Paragraphs of Passion
• Doctor’s Journey
• ACCW
• My Arrival
• If you are working with a team and you have respect for each member of the team and you give them the opportunity to express themselves, you know you’re not always going to agree, but everybody has the opportunity to put forward their thoughts and be listened to.
• Inside the Warden’s Office
• Daily Life
• Paragraphs of Passion
• Doctor’s Journey
• A Day in the Life of Prison
• At the Inmate Committee Meetings I really understood what was going on, what was happening in the prison (e.g., the canteen lists, the need for hairdryers) and what was going wrong. We couldn’t fix everything, but the interaction was really good for me and helped me understand.
• Flashback 1: Life in Prison
• Putting Responsibility into the Women’s Hands
• The more we gave people opportunities, the more they valued the opportunities and responded. The more we gave responsibility for doing things to the women themselves, and the more we talked to the staff about our plans, the better the situation got.
• Working Things Out
• Flashback 2: Life in Prison
• All these events taught me what a community is and how you can build a community anywhere.
• Ground Rules
• Flashback 3: Life in Prison
• Business as Usual
• Recreation Therapy
• Paragraphs of Passion
• Doctor’s Journey
• Alison’s Office
• Flashback 4: Life in Prison
• Dropping by the Recreation Therapist’s Office
• Flashback 5: Life in Prison
• The Labyrinth
• Flashback 6: Life in Prison
• Hope Abecedarian1
• Babies in Prison
• Paragraphs of Passion
• Doctor’s Journey
• When I was babysitting baby Jayden, I would be doing horticulture also. I would take Jayden with me to horticulture and I would be handing out the tools to the women in the morning and women would talk with Jayden. Jayden would bring up lots of emotions for women about their own children. For me, being away from my son, babysitting Jayden helped.
• Children at ACCW
• Tanya’s Story
• Kelly’s Story
• Mo’s Story
• Yearning
• Participatory Health Research
• Paragraphs of Passion
• Doctor’s Journey
• Staff began to see women differently. Their attitude changed. With the research presentations, the dialogue, what women had accomplished, wanting to be more involved. Initially the staff were not that engaged. Then they were impressed by the women’s energy, by their interest, by the changes, their dedication—people responded to that. Everybody came out of the research forums learning.
• First Forum
• Reflections on My Days at ACCW
• The Research Office
• I’m proud of what the women accomplished—doing that work [developing and presenting the PowerPoints and developing the surveys] reminded us women why we were in prison—the research projects were the heart of the transformation that happened in the prison—every project changed peoples’ lives, both the women who were listening and attending the research forums, the women who participated in the surveys, and especially the women who did the research on their own passion, who developed the PowerPoints/surveys and who presented on that topic.
• PowerPoint Presentations that Women Created and Presented
• Surveys Created by Women on the Research Team
• “Doing Research” Inside Prison
• Flashback 7: Participatory Health Research in Prison
• Community
• Paragraphs of Passion
• Doctor’s Journey
• Working Together
• Hope
• Women on the Prison Research Team Debrief
• Writing Letters in Prison to the Outside Community
• W2W Community Reaching In, Reaching Out
• Something’s Happening Behind the Barbed Wire Fence
• Indigenous Learning
• Paragraphs of Passion
• Doctor’s Journey
• Sacred Rhythm
• Research Forum, Prayer1
• Aboriginal Healing in Prison
• Aboriginal Elder in Prison
• Building Bridges with Women in the Spirit of Learning
• Leaving Holy Cow Style
• My Longest Journey
• Stories of Transformation
• Paragraphs of Passion
• Doctor’s Journey
• Time of Hope
• Dreams
• The Little Prison that Could
• The Prison that Changed My Life
• Three Prayers of Thanks
• Proud of Who I Am Today
• Hope Comes Before Fear
• Jessica’s Story1
• The Big Turnaround
• Grey Day Reflections
• Welcoming the Stranger Home
• What Makes a Successful Prison?1
• Contributor Notes