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  • Across the country, hundreds of thousands of women are facing a new reality.

  • If a girl is performing sexual favors, he would bring her in colored pencils, lip gloss.

  • Where they are forced to navigate worlds of sexual bartering, manipulation, and abuse

  • while finding ways to survive.

  • They'll definitely use your needs against you.

  • Sexually, physically, emotionally.

  • They will break you down any way they can.

  • Over the last few decades, women have been making gains in representation in almost every

  • field and industry.

  • Yet there's one part of society where the number of women has exploded and they're

  • still fighting for basic rights:

  • Prison.

  • Since the 1980's, the number of incarcerated women has skyrocketed by 700%.

  • Women have become the fastest growing population entering the criminal justice system.

  • It's a $173 billion dollar industry, making it bigger than Target, Uber, and Netflix.

  • Just outside of Portland, Oregon, Coffee Creek Correctional Facility has found a unique way

  • to ease it's overpopulation problem:

  • providing beauty behind bars through its cosmetology program.

  • Thank you.

  • I have to admit, I was skeptical.

  • I knew that beauty had the power to transform, but could it really change how women do time?

  • We went to see who these women were, and what they had to say.

  • The cosmetology program here started in 2002, when Coffee Creek saw a need for female focus

  • programming, and decided to do something about it.

  • What do you want to do today?

  • Just a trim.

  • The program has become so popular that it recently doubled in size.

  • Fellow inmates make up most of the clients who come in for services provided by the students.

  • How's that?

  • Yeah.

  • Everything from hair and makeup, to gels, and even eyelash extensions.

  • I think it looks really good, you did a very good job

  • The program itself is highly competitive to get into.

  • To even be considered, inmates must have a track record of good behavior and a desire to change.

  • If there's anything I'm good at, it will be makeup.

  • Its certainly true for 34-year-old Candice Altman, a repeat offender at Coffee Creek

  • on drug charges.

  • Some of us made more than one bad decision, but a majority of us are just here feeling

  • bad about the things that we did.

  • We want to get out and be good moms, and have careers, and to be reintegrated.

  • We want that.

  • The majority of women coming into prison are like Candice, in for a non-violent

  • offense and the primary caretaker of a child under 18.

  • It doesn't look like much now, but it's gonna be nice when it's done.

  • They're also predominantly women of color.

  • This is my third time in prison and so, at every other time it's just been hopeless,

  • like wasted time.

  • For the first time I feel like I just have this goal.

  • This justsomething, some kind of purpose.

  • Why is beauty especially important for women who are in prison?

  • You kind of lose your femininity.

  • We all wear men's jeans and these terribly fitting blue t-shirts.

  • They take away all your individuality.

  • They take away everything like that.

  • So I think you taking care of yourself and doing your makeup and fixing your hair,

  • it just helps your whole attitude about being here.

  • It's all affected by that, I think.

  • Someone might say that women in prison don't necessarily deserve access to beauty products.

  • What would you say to that?

  • Maybe it's not a matter of deserving these things.

  • It's a matter of rehabilitating people and giving them hope, and keeping them from continuing

  • the same cycles of coming back.

  • We have a lot of women that are here that we find have co-occurring disorders, so both

  • mental health issues, and alcohol and drug treatment needs, and they find themselves

  • on this path that they don't really have a lot of control in.

  • Christine views the success of the cosmetology program as proof that an approach tailored

  • towards women works.

  • These women, a number of them, repeat bad relationships, and the notion of their own

  • sense of worth and value is not something they have a great grasp on.

  • Certainly, the programs help the practice.

  • They help the sense of,

  • "I can do this. I know how to do this."

  • And supporting them in that manner is crucial.

  • Many of the women here at Coffee Creek and across the country come into prison with a

  • history of mental health issues, domestic violence, and sexual abuse that makes their

  • rehabilitation that much more complicated.

  • Programs like this not only provide women with an access point to beauty and self care,

  • but help to bridge the gap of mental health, drug, and social services that are underfunded.

  • Despite the fact that for every taxpayer dollar spent on services, up to five more are saved in recidivism.

  • Coffee Creek gave me a glimpse into what a prison at the forefront of responding to the

  • influx of incarcerated women looks like.

  • But I wanted to know, how are other prisons across the country responding?

  • I went to visit another program in another prison with a very different environment.

  • Lowell Correctional Facility is one of the largest women's prisons in the country.

  • The officers are underpaid and stretched thin, often at the expense of the inmates.

  • But there's a bright spot: the cosmetology program.

  • As soon as I walked in I met Kerry, who after serving almost three years for multiple charges,

  • was coming in for a haircut before being released the next day.

  • Why was it important for you to come in today before you get out tomorrow?

  • I mean, it just means everything to have your hair done, and walk out and feel good about

  • yourself as you're re-entering society.

  • When those little things are taken away you don't realize how important they are until you don't have them.

  • It makes sense, for many women, including myself.

  • Beauty has been ingrained in us by society as an integral part of how we understand who we are.

  • And in prison, where so much is stripped away from you, makeup becomes a lifeline to hold onto.

  • It was clear that this program was doing a lot for these women.

  • But even in this little sanctuary, they couldn't entirely escape what was allegedly going on beyond these walls.

  • It's what you have to live with, since you are in prison.

  • The problem is the whole structure of the prison is set up in a way that sort of invites abuse.

  • When guards have so much power, and inmates are so powerless, it's just a corrupting situation really.

  • 27-year-old Amanda Hunter was sentenced to a year and a day for resisting and battery

  • of a law enforcement officer.

  • She was released in December of 2016.

  • I told the officers, “I made a promise I'm coming for heads.”

  • I'm telling everything.

  • The abuse, you know, sexually, physically, emotionally.

  • They will break you down anyway they can.

  • What would happen if you saw and reported an officer?

  • Anything.

  • I mean, they'll take you to lock for it.

  • They'll threaten your life.

  • I've heard the stories, you know, of people who overdose on blood pressure medicine.

  • You know, but these people were fearing for their lives and were writing home telling

  • their families, "I'm afraid they're gonna kill me," and then you end up dead.

  • Amanda was referring to the case of Latandra Ellington, an inmate who in 2014 was found

  • dead in her confinement cell at just 36 years old.

  • The autopsy ruled it a natural death even though toxicology reports found levels of

  • blood pressure medication 7 to 8 times the normal amount.

  • Just 10 days before, Latandra allegedly witnessed an officer having sex with an inmate.

  • Latandra said that when she threatened to report it, the officer threatened her life.

  • The mysterious conditions surrounding Latandra's death set off a series of investigations that

  • came out in the Miami Herald.

  • The reports revealed a culture of abuse by officers, including sexual bartering with

  • inmates for things like cigarettes, sanitary pads, or even makeup.

  • 40-year-old Natalie Hall witnessed firsthand how the conditions at Lowell opened the door for exploitation.

  • I'm not gonna project like I was some perfect model inmate, cause I wasn't.

  • Natalie was sentenced to five and a half years for armed robbery.

  • She told us that she's been clean since her release since March of 2017, blaming her

  • heroin habit putting her in the wrong place with the wrong people.

  • So these are colored pencils.

  • They're contraband, which means you can't have them.

  • But we still get them.

  • And you dip it in water and it just comes right off.

  • We would do our eyes with them.

  • Where did you get them?

  • Usually if a girl's performing sexual favors for an officer he would bring her in colored

  • pencils, lip gloss, things like that that she could use for makeup or to sell.

  • She revealed to us that this kind of sexual bartering for makeup was just the tip of the iceberg.

  • You would have to sit at the window and basically flirt with a male officer for a good 20, 30

  • minutes just to get just enough toilet paper to use the restroom.

  • They'll definitely use your needs against you.

  • The things that they keep from us, toilet paper, pads.

  • You didn't get tampons, unless you bought them.

  • See, as inmates, we find a way.

  • When those necessities aren't met, and taken care of, it becomes your primary goal to always

  • see that these things are taken care of.

  • This is your prison tampon.

  • Even if you'll get in trouble for it, you have to get it, and you will find a way to get it.

  • On Lowell's main unit, there's not even walls in between shower heads.

  • So here's the officer's station, here's a wall that's maybe four feet, and here's

  • six shower heads where six women shower next to each other.

  • And believe me, the officers watch the whole thing.

  • Did they ever make comments?

  • Oh yeah, I even have text messages.

  • “I miss turning around and seeing those things, you in the shower, ha ha ha.

  • You know you got extra toilet paper that day.”

  • Officers have reached out to you since you've been out?

  • Yes.

  • At least four.

  • Would you be willing to show us those text messages?

  • Sure.

  • I don't care.

  • He was like, "That's good.

  • I still talked about you after you left.

  • Always turning around and seeing you and those things in the shower because of you being

  • taller than the door and wall.

  • Boy, I miss that. LOL. And Jacksonville isn't too far from me, maybe 40 minutes at the most.

  • Could we meet up?"

  • What did he mean bythose things?”

  • My breasts.

  • I really thought he was just like checking in on me.

  • And I think this is when it hit me that all they wanted was sex.

  • It's a situation of power.

  • How many tampons you get, if any.

  • How many pads you get.

  • Whether you get to your shower or not.

  • Those decisions are all made by guards.

  • So, you can see how if you get somebody in there who's mean or vindictive, or wants something

  • from you, it's easy for them to make that happen.

  • If a guard wants sex from you, what do you do?

  • You could say no, but they have control over every aspect of your life.

  • While the allegations we heard about Lowell illustrates an extreme version of what can

  • happen when a prison systematically fails the inmates it's responsible for, this type

  • of exploitation and abuse is pervasive across the country.

  • Even Coffee Creek has had issues.

  • That fact is, until the criminal justice system overhauls the way it treats women behind bars,

  • no prison is immune to these problems.

  • Billions of dollars are being spent in the name of mass incarceration.

  • But what happens once the inmates are in the system?

  • Without safe conditions to serve their time and the programs to address the underlying

  • issues, women find themselves trapped by bad circumstances and bad choices.

  • Sometimes we just have to get them out of the scenario that they're in, or the situation

  • that they're in.

  • They find that they're stronger and smarter than they ever knew they were.

  • Do the women who participate in an educational or vocational program tend to have a lower

  • chance of returning to prison?

  • Participation in programming, in general, greatly impacts recidivism rates.

  • It is something that the women have just really thrived in.

  • I didn't know how to take care of myself so I always went back in to use drugs and

  • committing crime to support myself.

  • Has your experience this time been different from the other because of this program?

  • Everyday I build more and more confidence.

  • This program is really is helping me to be able to build that foundation.

  • Not have to depend on nobody to provide what I'm supposed to provide for my kids.

  • It's clear that programs like this provide the means to restore women's dignity and

  • self-respect amid the harshest conditions.

  • Beauty is just one small piece of a complex puzzle, but it's one that can change lives.

  • Prison is supposed to be punishment, it's also supposed to be rehabilitation.

  • I needed rehab, not a prison where men degraded me and put me down and abused people.

  • Nobody deserves what I went through.

  • Nobody.

  • Somebody says that I'm not getting necessities that I need to live life normally,

  • that's not a punishment, that's abuse.

  • If you did that to a child, you're gonna lose your child, you're gonna go to jail.

  • So why is it okay to do that to an adult?

  • There's no quick fix for a system overwhelmed with problems, but one thing is clear:

  • No one can rehabilitate when they're fighting for basic needs of survival.

  • And until then, the criminal justice system will continue to funnel predominantly non-violent

  • offenders into a world that leaves these women worse off than when they went in.

  • Thanks for watching Refinery29.

  • For more videos like this click here, and to subscribe, click here.

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of women are facing a new reality.

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監獄の裏にある美とは何か|Shady|Refinery29 (What Beauty Is Like Behind Prison Bars | Shady | Refinery29)

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    Evangeline に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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