Project Coordinator: Lisa Calderon
Purpose of Project:
Cultivate economic self-sufficiency and positive
parenting strategies during and after incarceration for mothers to
successfully reintegrate into their homes, communities and children’s
lives thereby reducing recidivism, breaking the generational cycle of
incarceration and increasing political engagement through education, job
skill development, financial literacy, mentorship, and activities that
encourage healthy mother-child bonding and economic self-sufficiency.
Project Lead: Colorado Women’s Agenda
promotes economic self-sufficiency initiatives and addresses the root
causes of racial disparities that disenfranchise women politically.
Colorado Women’s Agenda is an anti-racist, social justice network that
advocates statewide for economic security, political empowerment and race
equity. We engage women along a continuum of non-partisan activism,
including grassroots organizing, community education, leadership
development and political participation at both local and statewide
levels.
In December 2007, CWA held its first Financial
Literacy course with participants at Tooley Hall, a 60-bed community
corrections program for adult female offenders that works to ensure that
participants are prepared for independent community living.
Scope of the Problem.
According to the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform
Coalition 2006 fact sheet on Women in Prison:
• Colorado’s female incarceration rate has
grown faster than the male incarceration rate. Between 1993 and 2003,
the female incarceration rate increased twice as much as the male rate.
• Eighty-six percent of women sent to
Colorado’s prisons in 2002 were convicted of a non-violent offense.
The five most frequent crimes for which women were sent to prison in 2001
were:
~ drugs 35%
~ theft-12%
~ attempt/conspiracy/accessory to a nonviolent
crime - 12%
~ escape/contraband •~ 10%
~ forgery-7%
• In Colorado, the rate of imprisonment for
Black women is more than twelve times the rate for white women. The rate
for Latina women is nearly twice times that of white women.
A majority of women prisoners (65%) are mothers
of children under 18 years old.
Studies have shown that children are greatly
affected (academically, behaviorally, and socially) by the incarceration
of their mother. Children with an incarcerated mother are 5 to 6 times
more likely to become incarcerated than other children who live in
poverty, but whose mothers have never been in prison.
• Mothers in prison risk having their
parental rights terminated during their incarceration, Under Colorado
state law, a prisoner’s parental rights can be terminated solely on the
basis that they won’t be eligible for parole for 3 years. Also, the
Department of Social Services can file to terminate a prisoner’s parental
rights if their children are in home placement for 15 of the last 22
months. Meanwhile, the average sentence for a woman incarcerated is four
years.
• Women prisoners are three times more
likely than men to be seriously mentally ill. In 2002, 42.7% of
female inmates had a diagnosis of serious mental illness (compared to
13.9% of male prisoners).
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Resources
Colorado Criminal Justice Reform
Coalition's "Parenting From Prison"
Women Prison Health Care
When
the Bough Breaks: Mothers in Prison
Invisible victims: children of women in prison
Center for children of incarcerated parents
Mothers in prison: coping with separation from children
(pdf)
Bureau of Justice Statistics on Women offenders
Women coping prison
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