¶ Promoting Kindness Through Criminal Justice
Well , hello there and welcome . You are listening to the Kindness Matters podcast and I am your host , Mike Rathbun . What is this podcast all about ? It's about kindness .
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Folks , Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today . I am so happy to have you . I'm honored that you chose to take some time out of your life to listen to the show .
Remember , if there's anything in this podcast that you find moving or inspiring or motivating , please share it with your friends and family and anybody else who you think would benefit from it . So today on our podcast , I have the great honor of welcoming Colleen Bell .
Colleen has a distinguished career , marked by her service on the board of directors of the Ostara Initiative , where she currently serves as a chair . Her academic contributions are significant , having taught students at Hamlin University from 1990 through 2020 in fields such as conflict studies , women's and gender studies and social justice studies .
Among the highlights of her teaching career are the Inside Out courses she conducted in 2017 and 2018 at the Shakopee Correctional Facility . These courses , which included students both from the campus and within the prison , stand out as some of the peak experiences of her career .
In addition to her tenure at Hamlin University , Colleen has taught at the University of Tulsa , University of Illinois and the College of St Scholastica . I knew I was going to mess that one up .
Beyond her academic endeavors , she is also a dedicated gardener and a writer , currently focusing on unlearning academic speak to embrace a more authentic expression of her thoughts and ideas . Thank you so much for taking the time , Colleen . Welcome to the show . Thank you , Not bad for AI huh .
Not bad , yes .
Oh , that was the first time I have ever had AI write an introduction for me . It was okay . I didn't speak so well , but the intro itself was okay , so let's talk about . I mean , we were going to talk mostly about Ostara and what they do , but this is more of a general conversation about basically , women in the judicial system , right ?
more of a general conversation about basically , women in the judicial system . Right yeah , I call it the criminal legal system , because justice is so often missing . Got it , especially when you think about individual women who are impacted by the system .
Yeah , and we tend to group and we all do it . I think to a certain extent you go women criminal justice system and you take the individuality , you take the human being out of that and that's where we tend to get into trouble . I think , yeah , so talk about what does Ostara do and how did it start ?
Well , it did start in Minnesota , at Shakopee . This was in about , I think , 2010 . Erica Garrity , who continues to lead Ostara , started the Minnesota Prison Doula Project with Raylene Baker Both doulas , both recognizing some of the issues that affect babies long-term when their moms are incarcerated during their birth .
So one thing that happens in women's facilities is , especially when staffing is short , women are scheduled to give birth by C-section rather than having a natural birth . That is bad , we know , in the long term for women's health , but also for babies .
So the rate of C-sections in the nation actually care and natural birth is actually a big money saver for the state . So C-sections cost a lot more than natural births . So that is a major problematic health trend that's been turned around in Minnesota . That's not true everywhere . So the prison doula program started .
The one that started in Minnesota also involved working against shackling women during labor and delivery .
Wait . So women were shackled during labor and delivery .
Pregnant women . Imagine someone who's nine months pregnant , who's not gone into labor yet , probably , but put in a van to be transported to the local hospital Belly chains , with wrists chained to the belly and ankle chains you know it's .
The American Medical Association has made it very clear that this is such a risk to moms , to babies and liability , frankly , for the Department of Corrections . So that has been changed in many states . There are still 10 states , though , that have no prohibitions , no laws about shackling pregnant women .
That's crazy . Yeah , nothing like pointing out a cost savings to get somebody to perk up and take notice , right .
Exactly .
Exactly notice , right , Exactly so now . And you guys , you were not satisfied with just Minnesota .
You expanded this initiative , correct ? True , I think that was not necessarily an initial goal . But gosh , I'm not sure of the year , but at one point Tutwiler Prison , the state prison for women in Alabama , was called out for custodial rape , in other words , women who are incarcerated going in not pregnant but becoming impregnated while they're there .
The Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice at the federal level gave Alabama notice . If you don't clean this up , we will come in and take over . At that point , people in Alabama reached out to the folks in Minnesota about maternal and child health inside prisons . So we now partner with the Alabama Prison Birth Project and they actually .
Tutwiler is now one of the cutting edge prisons in the nation when it comes to lactation . So they now have a breast pumping room , milk so the moms can pump milk after they've given birth and they are separated from their babies , but the milk gets to the babies outside the prison . That was true in Alabama before . It was true in Minnesota .
It is now true in Minnesota .
That's a good thing .
Alabama surprised everyone by taking the lead there .
Yeah , it's just kind of a human decency thing , isn't it ? I mean to give women their own space , if you will , to pump milk for their babies .
And I think , if you think about the babies as the people who will eventually be in charge of this society , it makes no sense to punish them . They have done nothing wrong and you know the whole .
I've heard people say when a woman is incarcerated , a whole family is incarcerated , and there are some local groups that are working on the notion that the community is affected , because very often what women are doing in the community is organizing , supporting , doing home care , and so when you pull someone out , it's not punishing just her kids or the immediate
family . There are many more people who are affected .
For sure . Yeah , I mean , if you think about all the ways that the women impact communities , it's just , and I mean to be fair , we're not saying that no woman should ever go , not go to prison .
No , and I think most incarcerated women with whom I've been in touch in class or otherwise would not say they don't want to take responsibility . The question is more one of the way .
For example , the way some prisons in Europe do this is think about the sanctity of the mother-child bond , not just from a physical health perspective , but a mental health perspective , a community perspective , a longer-term perspective , and so babies are not separated from their moms in many European prisons .
That's maybe another conversation , but a group of people from OSARA did travel to some European prisons last year and we'll be coming out with a white paper on that what we learned there in 2025 . So stay tuned .
Yeah , so they provide space for the child and the mother to be imprisoned at the same time .
Imprisoning kids doesn't sound right . They live together , their street closed . They eat together , kids , their street clothes .
they eat together . Kids leave and go to school and come back . Yeah , so , and yeah , you've got a kind of a double-edged sword there . I mean , if somebody's listening to this and they think , oh wow , the kid's in prison too , yeah , but they're with their mom .
Yes . And the conditions are not like they are in our prisons . It's viewed as a temporary way of repaying community for harm inflicted and in this society largely it's very difficult to outlive your punishment . Even if you're only in for a year , you still will have trouble getting a driver's license , getting a job , getting housing .
You know it's just extremely difficult to reenter society .
Sure , absolutely . So now , do you just work with federal prisons , or is it others ?
We started with Shakopee , which is the state prison for women , and most of our other facilities are in the states , but we also work with three counties in Minnesota and five federal prisons . So overall we have 19 different facilities where we serve clients across seven different states .
And I guess Oregon just joined as well .
That's right , Oregon , oh my goodness . And in that facility women actually wear their own clothes , not uniforms .
Talk about human decency thing allowing a convicted person to wear their own clothing . That's got to be huge for their own mental health .
The morale is yeah , it makes a huge difference .
So , and I think you know , most people probably don't even really think too much about women in prison and there might be a lot of myths or misunderstandings . Can you maybe go through some of those ?
Sure , I mean . The first thing is if we think about people who are incarcerated in the largest incarcerating nation .
Yeah , we're right up there with incarcerating our own citizens .
And most US states also incarcerate more people than the most incarcerating nations . So the Prison Policy Initiative is a nonprofit that puts together some very interesting charts . If people want to compare their own state's incarceration level with various countries elsewhere in the world , that is the place to go in the world , that is the place to go .
But also just thinking about what people don't know or understand or think about about women in prison only about 7% of people who are locked up in the United States are women . Prisons were designed for men by men . The fact that only seven percent of people incarcerated are female makes it easy for people to ignore .
I was going to say , that makes it easier for them to not think about it .
Justice impacted folks , but you know there's another . This is still kind of on the broad general scheme of things . About 2 million people in this country are behind bars , 7% of which are women , but that is only about half .
Actually , it's less than half of the people who are under control of the correctional system , because there are all these things that people have to do when they leave prison .
So there's probation , there's parole , there's community corrections , and you can't screw up even when you're not behind bars , because you will be sent back to prison in many cases , and that is going back to prison not for committing a crime , but for not following the massive , detailed rules that are expected of people .
Missing a call from your PO or what have you Community supervision ?
Yes , yes , so that's extremely important to remember when we talk about the population .
Yeah , so you have the number of people that are incarcerated , but that doesn't include the number of people who are on parole or supervised release . I'm not exactly sure what that is .
Yep , yep , and it also doesn't it ? Usually , I mean , when people talk about prison , it's either federal or state or tribal , but it doesn't talk about jails , and jails are at the county level , usually sentences of less than a year . So that's another chunk of people and a lot of women land in jails .
As opposed to prison .
Yeah , they're even less well . Jails are less well equipped to take care of women's health . There are some pretty egregious things , as you know probably from the news , that happen in our county jails .
Yeah , for sure I also wanted to just say , because we're talking about birth , the figures are very hard to pin down in terms of how many women are pregnant when they're inside . There was a 2019 study that we rely on . It pegged it at about 4 to 5 percent of incarcerated women at any one time are pregnant .
So women are 7% of the prison population and 4% to 5% of that number is pregnant . Now , is that pregnant when they go in , or do they differentiate ?
They really the data collection about this , just to reinforce the idea that women are neglected or ignored . Not really , it's a patchwork . States do it differently . The feds have rules , but states have their own rules , state by state , and , of course , state prisons . And and , of course , state prisons and legislation and crime laws . They vary across the states .
So it's extremely difficult to do anything across the board . Yeah , it's hard to you have the federal rules and then , but every state you got 50 , probably 50 different sets of rules on data collection .
Yeah , so , even though pregnant women are such a tiny part of incarcerated women if you think just about the organization that I work with in seven states , 19 facilities just last year we delivered 17 babies and served 835 unique clients- that's incredible .
That's incredible .
¶ Challenges in Women's Prison System
Now , do the doulas , do the inmates , have to leave the prison to have the baby , or do you facilitate birthing inside the prison ?
No people go to hospitals , and I don't know this for a fact , but my guess is that that is a legal liability kind of concern because there are no physicians or nurses in the facilities .
Yeah , that makes sense , that makes sense .
But if it should happen and a doula were there , you know , unless there were some kind of physical complication , physical complication the doula would be there to support the mom . It's really important , I think , to understand what is the difference between a doula and , for example , a midwife or an OBGYN .
Doulas provide physical , emotional and informational support before , during and after birth . So we're educating the moms about what's coming , we support them through the birthing process and then we stay connected to them afterwards . We do not provide medical care care .
So what physical support looks like is maybe for a mom who's leaving the facility after giving birth and say her baby is a few months old , living with a relative , we might have to help her find housing if she's having a rough time . That's an example of physical support . That's an example of physical support . The emotional support is very , very powerful .
Women often first being incarcerated and then being in the midst of labor , don't necessarily realize their power to say no , don't give me any drugs , for example . What if they're recovering from some sort of chemical dependence ?
Absolutely .
You know the physician wants to administer some kind of painkiller and the mom can say no and a doula can encourage the mom to speak her desire about that .
Yeah , and just because of the way the prison system is built and the control we assume is all within the prison system and I can see very easily how a woman would say I can't say I can't have that .
Yeah , yeah , I mean , people are silenced , people are , they're not spoken to with their first name , so it's a very dehumanizing process . And then to dehumanize that sacred moment , I would say , of giving birth , it's incredible .
So I think a lot of people have assumptions about women in prison . I think , for example , one of them might be that women and men who are involved in the system follow the same path .
Not true , definitely not true . Yeah , women , about half , I think it is . Is that true ? About half of women are there for drug or property crimes , is that ?
like the Carrie Underwood keying the truck kind of crime yeah .
Um , I don't know where that fits , actually , because I'm not .
When you said property crime , I just went there immediately . I don't know why .
It's more often stealing food , that sort of thing . I think of them as survival crimes . So all of the chemical dependence issues , so drug possession , have to do usually with some kind of early trauma , childhood trauma and then self-medicating because our system of mental health care is so impoverished .
Yeah , and so you know , when I first went into a state prison , I had no idea what to expect and I saw old women in wheelchairs . I saw people who were unable to speak English and there were no translators for their language . And you know what that gives rise to is women inside are not always , but often , compassionate toward one another .
So I don't know why I was surprised by that , but that's encouraging .
I mean the idea of a criminal . You know , we think of all the negativity but we don't think of why . And the system does not care why a person is using drugs or stealing food . Yeah , killing a partner a murder , it's totally . It happens often that moms who do that are protecting kids or protecting themselves .
So if there's abuse in the situation , you know we're just very far behind places like Australia in terms of how we handle this sort of thing .
Yeah , I saw a stat the other day . In 2023 , in the state of Minnesota , there were 40 murders related to domestic violence .
Yeah , and that was a record violence . Yeah , and that was a record .
Yeah , yeah , okay how about ? Another assumption Women get what they need in prison .
Oh gosh . Well , go back to the statement I made earlier about prisons being built by and for men . So that's the first problem . I can't even . I used to teach courses about this and I would ask the students is a feminist prison possible ?
Could you have a prison ? Dedicated to the liberation of women and what would that look like that's a great thought experiment .
Yes , very challenging , but let's just say that , in spite of the legal requirements that the state is responsible for those who are in its custody , health care in prisons generally is inadequate . Health care in prisons generally is inadequate and women's health care needs are different than men's .
Just take the example of the food that a pregnant woman gets inside .
What do they get ? Well , the usual fare , which is , I would say , unappetizing at best from what I have seen and tasted . But a pregnant woman might get an extra piece of fruit a day , so she's not getting the calories she needs to grow that baby . Nor is she getting nutritional balance .
If her family can buy her the multivitamins that pregnant women should take , she can have those .
That's a big if , though , isn't it ?
Absolutely , absolutely yes , so I would say no . In fact , I think that prisons are dangerous places for women . Thinking about custodial rape , thinking about women not getting the mental health care that they need , not getting drug treatment , that sort of thing .
Which kind of leads us to the next misunderstanding or assumption which ?
is that women are safe when they're incarcerated , Right ? No , and I think yes . Custodial rape is a part of that . Another part of it is the way that segregation is used , or solitary confinement that can be used used for any kind of punishment . So what if a woman is unable to give a urine sample when she is asked ?
If she cannot do that , if she cannot produce that , she might be sent to SEG . So it's all about compliance . But also women who have mental health issues if they act out or have some sort of an episode where they lose control , they might be sent to segregation . And what could be worse than isolating someone who's in a mental health crisis ?
For sure , yeah , okay , last one . We're all safer with tough-on-crime laws .
Oh boy , yeah . Well , the way I think about this I have talked about it with my students is to say , reminding ourselves that 90 to 95% of the people who are locked up are coming back to the community . How do we want to treat them , interact with them while they're incarcerated ?
And there is lots of evidence that prisons do not make people less likely to commit crime . Only for people who do sexual , predator behavior and the most serious , you know , life-taking kinds of crimes . They are the least likely people to go back to prison . But it's almost as if prison is a schooling for future crime .
So people inside are not safer , people outside are not safer . And , mike , there's one other thing I think people should know , should understand , about safety that last question we were talking about about women being safer inside . We were talking about women being safer inside .
There's been a study actually done at Shakopee and a paper written about body cavity searches . So many things are attributed to the need for security , but women are subject to body cavity searches . If there's a female corrections officer available , she might be the person to perform it , but most corrections officers are men .
So imagine a woman who has just given birth . She comes back to the prison without her baby and because she's been outside , she must have a body cavity search .
That's so wrong .
I think the right term for it would be state-sponsored sexual assault .
You're not wrong .
So there's a lot of room for humanity , for our becoming more humane . And you know this is a personal opinion . I have never found punishment to be that effective in changing people's behavior . I'm much more of a person who offers encouragement and recognition , acknowledgement of people's pain . It just doesn't make sense to me .
Yeah , I agree , it just doesn't make sense to me . Yeah , I agree . I mean , yes , there are situations where I think some people belong in prison , as you were saying . But I just it's funny .
I was watching the news the other night and they were talking to and this is a completely different subject , but it kind of ties in a young Palestinian man in Gaza and both of his parents and two of his siblings were killed and his home was destroyed .
He lost his job , he has nowhere else to go and for him Hamas looks like a really good option because they'll pay him money . And I realize it's an extreme example , but it's kind of the same thing , is it not ?
Where you know , once these people get out of prison , oftentimes and I don't male or female they have trouble finding jobs , they have trouble finding places to live , and it's so much easier just to go back to where they started from .
Yeah , yeah , yeah . I do think that idea about options being limited , which is in your story about the young man from Gaza that is not what we think about when we determine punishment , either length or location . We do not think about why people commit crimes , so we do not go to the root of the issue .
Commit crimes , so we do not go to the root of the issue . We are simply putting a band-aid temporarily on an oozing , gaping wound in someone's life , and we do it to masses of people . I just don't understand how people could argue that that makes our neighborhoods safer , don't ?
understand how people could argue that that makes our neighborhoods safer . Yeah , for sure . Okay , let's wrap up . Let's talk about resources for people that want to learn more about Ostara and the Prison Policy Initiative . Where can they go to look for ?
that website . It's ostarainitiativeorg . That website is filled with resources , so there are films , there are members of our staff giving short talks about various aspects of what happens for women who are incarcerated .
There's also a victim impact statement given by one of the board members , and also lots of ways to participate in our work remotely , that is , by donating certain items that moms and their newborns need .
So not just money , but it's actual .
Yep , when moms are leaving , when their sentence is , minnesota has the Healthy Start Act which says if moms are leaving prison within a year they go to a community setting that's secure with their baby , and so we try to support that . And so rocking chairs and you know , cribs and all kinds of anyway . You can look at the website for that .
The Prison Policy Initiative will give ideas , statistical information about incarceration in the nation . They have a wonderful search engine on the Prison Policy Initiative website so you can look up things about women . You can look up things about trans people who are incarcerated , which is probably another show .
For sure .
Lots and lots of ways to learn more , and we also love to come and give talks . You can have a doula come and give a talk to a classroom , a health class , for example , or a social studies class about women's incarceration . We do lots of public speaking and we love doing it .
That's fantastic . Oh , that's Colleen . Thank you so much . That's going to show up on my . I'll have to , okay , just like do that kind of clapping . Thank you so much for taking time out of your day . I know you're busy and I appreciate the time that you spent with us here .
This is , there's a lot of information here to think about when we're talking about being kinder to other human beings , and I just appreciate everything you guys do .
Thank you , mike . I want to add to your the title of your podcast . It says kindness matters and I would say kindness and humanity matter .
I think they're tied hand in hand , but I won't discount your comment . I'll take that under advisement .
Yeah , thank you so much .
You're very , very welcome and you have a good week . I will you too . Bye now . I want to thank you for taking this time to listen to this episode with my guest , colleen Bell from the Ostera Initiative . I hope you're able to take something positive from the time you spent here today . Maybe you'll be inspired , maybe you'll be motivated , maybe you'll be moved .
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¶ Kindness Matters Podcast Feature
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