Never Again…

Bt Kacey C,  Resolana participant

Never again do I have to ask permission to use the restroom.

Never again do I have to hear – “Chow time, Count time, Laundry, Commissary.”

Never again do I have to stand in line for a tray of pre-packaged food.

Never again do I have to buy food items off a cart that cost too much for too little.

Never again do I have to wear ill-fitting clothes – panties too big, bras too small,

And socks that just don’t seem to fit at all.

Never again do I have to sit with my fingers crossed hoping to hear my name

Called at mail call.

Never again do I have to miss my family.

Never again will my mom have to ask herself – “Where did I go wrong?”

Never again will my child have to ask – “When is mommy coming home?”

Never again do I have to do any of these things – unless I choose to do the

things that got me here in the first place.

Never again!

Kacey C

Through the Eyes of a Woman Inmate

By Alejandra Aguirre, SMU student and Resolana volunteer

Working at the Dallas County Jail with the women has opened my eyes more than any other community service project I have done. While working there for about two months I created relationships with some of the women and as they continued to come to the classes they begin to open up about their personal stories . I was given the opportunity to volunteer at the jail with the women through the Resolana program . This program seeks to empower women so that the cycle of incarceration may be broken.

From what I saw, this program truly affects the women inmates in a positive way as they are able to change their lives while inside a jail cell . Even though the United States seeks to better society by putting criminals and offenders in jails they will eventually get released. Once they are released, they return into the cycle of bad behavior. As the creator of Resolana, Bette Buschow states, “Our society warehouses individuals and we don’t teach them how to return to society.” Resolana not only empowered those women with whom I volunteered, it also empowered me and allowed me to see human rights in a new light. As the Dallas County Jail continues to increase the number of women who are incarcerated, they continue to ignore the real problems these women face out in society.

My personal experience at the jail was amazing. I was shocked to see so many women in need of outside human contact. The first day I was there I was intrigued by how friendly the women were to me. I did not expect to meet mean women who would be careless like in the movies. However, I was not expecting women who were just like my mother.

This is what impacted me the most. I saw my mother in many of these women and I thought to myself how easy it could have been for me or any of my women friends to end up in jail like these ladies. After all, most of these women had grown up in undesirable situations where no one had guided them to have a better future . In that sense, if I had not grown up with the parents I have and with the parenting they gave me, I could have been in their shoes. To this day, this thought fills my mind and every time I volunteered, as I went through four separate guarded doors all I could think was how granted I take my freedom.

Not only did I teach the women about myself and how they can have a better self image of themselves, I also gained so much. Every day I left Resolana feeling fulfilled
and accomplished because I knew that I was making an impact in the women’s life . Even though I was not advising them or hearing their complete story, I felt that my presence allowed them to continue to stay sane and realize that they are no different than free women. Whenever they walked into the classroom the only physical
difference I saw between the women and me was their green stripped uniforms .

The other differences between them and me were that I was lucky enough to have someone keep me out of trouble and out of the life circumstances they had had . The Dallas County Jail system is definitely broken and as more women continue to enter it, they are not creating a solution to their problems. The jail is simply hiding what they believe to be the problems of society. If the Dallas County Jail really wanted to fix the situation that these women come in, they would have a Resolana program in every jail pod .

A letter from Melody

March 12, 2012

Hello Jennifer,

It is so wonderful to hear from you and really enjoyed our talk. Sorry I’m just now getting back to you, but I’m looking for a job and doing some work out of the home helping some friends with their businesses keeps me busy and that’s a real good thing and oh yes the Grandchild keeps me very entertained and I’m loving every second of being clean and its gets better day by day and my worst day clean is still better than my best day high . I can never thank Resolana enough for being one of my most valuable stepping stones . Please send my love to Lesley and Twiliah and also to the Pod Officers.

Thank you Jennifer for taking the time to let me know I am not forgotten and that Resolana is and will always be a huge part of my recovery.

Very Humble
Melody T

How to donate to Resolana when you are on a budget

By Annie Montgomery, Resolana volunteer

As a twenty-something who recently entered the workforce, I unfortunately don’t have an abundant source of money from which to donate to my favorite causes. That’s why I’m delighted to find that Resolana has made it easier for me to support its work in my everyday life. Not only can I support Resolana through my grocery shopping at Tom Thumb and Albertson’s, but I can also do so through the GoodShop and GoodDining websites.
With GoodShop and GoodDining, a percentage of my spending automatically goes to the charity of my choice each time I use my pre-registered credit card. I certainly had reservations about signing up for the service: identity theft has made me wary of any sites that ask for my credit card information. But due to the fact that GoodShop and GoodDining have been recommended by reputable resources such as the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, I felt that little risk was involved with using the service.

By simply signing up, registering my credit card and registering Resolana as my charity of choice, I can ensure that a certain percentage of my spending goes to the non-profit. Through GoodDining, I have found numerous participating restaurants near my home that will donate a percentage of my bill to Resolana each time I use my credit card. With GoodShop, I can shop online at hundreds of stores including Amazon, Apple and Target while also donating to my favorite cause. Both are simple ways to fund Resolana without spending an extra cent.

Easy (and useful!) ways to donate

Some exciting new programs have developed to help non-profits like ours raise funds through the everyday actions of our supporters.

Here is how you can help:

Shop online. GoodShop.com works with more than 2,500 retailers (including Amazon, Gap, Target, Staples and Macy’s) to give a percentage of almost every purchase back to Resolana. In addition, GoodShop lists more than 100,000 coupons so that shoppers can save money and do good at the same time! GoodShop currently works with more than 102,000 charities and schools.

Dine out: GoodDining.com works with more than 10,000 restaurants across the country and each time you dine, up to 6% of what you spend is donated to Resoalna. Again you will be sent coupons to restaurants.

Search the Internet:  GoodSearch.com donates about a penny per search to the charity the user designates. It’s powered by Yahoo so users get great search results! Together with GoodShop, GoodSearch has raised more than $8 million for charity!

We have registered Resolana with these sites, so explore any of these sites to begin raising money today!

Interview with Kirsten Dunn-Wright, former Resolana participant

Kirsten Dunn-Wright with Jennifer McNabb, volunteer coordinator

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself (marital status, # kids, employment, education)?

Before I was incarcerated in “Lou Lou” as we call it, I was newly married for two short years, and I had two sons biological (my oldest 8 and my youngest only 6 months old) and two step daughters (my oldest 13 and my youngest 3). I worked as a independent optician for 3 years. I graduated from Grambling State University with a Bachelors in Business Management in 2004.

What brought you to jail (if you’re willing to have some of that made public)?

I was arrested on August 11th, 2010 for a first degree felony fraud charge. Because of the amount of fraud I was charged with, my felony was the highest the state could charge under capital murder. The minimum amount of time was 15 years because I had a prior background. As odd as it may seem I can freely explain this today because I know all of my mistakes or learning experiences have made me and continue to make me the woman I am; and inspire to be one day!

Unfortunately, being arrested August of 2010 was not my first time being in legal trouble. I had never been on probation before, but I had been to prison once and beat several federal and state fraud cases before with high powered attorneys and grace I can’t explain. This was not my First Rodeo. But as God lives this was my last! It’s almost hard to swallow the number of times I’ve been arrested. But for the first time when I was arrested in August 2010 I was unable to bond out. I was devastated. Every other time I bonded out but this time I had a parole hold Blue warrant placed on me and a one hundred thousand dollar bond. Even when I instructed my family where to obtain the $10K to bond me they couldn’t because of the parole hold.

So I sat in Lou Sterrett forced to face myself and the 10 years of in and out of the legal system that I had put myself through. There’s nothing like being in a situation that hurts so bad you feel like death is a privilege you can’t afford; but living is that much more painful. My thoughts rested on… “I did this. I put myself in jail again while my kids and husband (this time) scrambled to pull life as they knew together”. I thought of killing myself often. I didn’t understand myself, why I continued to screw up no matter how many people believed in me, no matter how many opportunities I was afforded. I still reverted back to fraud as my way out. For ten years fraud was always a way of life for me. My thinking needed to change I knew. But how? I prayed one simple prayer that I still say today “God change me, save me from me”.

How did you come to participate in Resolana?

I first entered Resolana in September 2010. I was in a regular pod and I would spend all of my days on my bunk reading and praying. God never left me; I am so grateful for that. I heard first about the education pod that had openings to take computer classes and gain a Microsoft certification. I was convinced I would not be in jail long, because of course I hadn’t been long in jail ever before. So I figured I’ll go to the education pod and at least be surrounded by other inmates that wanted to better themselves. Any one that’s been to jail before can tell you, some of the conversations that take place in those regular pods can be very depressing. All the war stories, oh, they can get gruesome.

So I was moved to the education tank and began computer classes. Being able to use the computer and dive into work was a great escape for me. The only problem was work always was an escape for me. I didn’t have to face myself as long as I was working alot. I did the same thing in Prison. I worked my assigned job and took college classes. I began focusing on working out and feeling better about myself and I once again began to fool myself into thinking “I am okay”.

Several of the girls in the education dorm were going to the Resolana classes in between computer classes. I asked them how to get in and they told me to drop a form. So I did. I honestly signed up for Resolana to stay busy. I just wanted to not have to face me; the real ugly me. I was in for a huge surprise. What I thought was going to be another series of classes to keep me busy turned out to be God answering my prayer. He was starting what would be a 8 month journey to save me from me.

Tell us about your experience with Resolana and how it impacted you. What would you say to an inmate recommending Resolana?

My very first class was a class with Lesley Mohney. I think it was called self work or something like that. I sat in that class and laughed and forgot for just that hour I was in jail. Lesley was so loving and she made me feel like she cared –. I mean truly cared about me and where I was mentally. That was a first for me. After the class was over I went back to the dorm excited about the next class. We had so much fun at the first one I went to I thought they were all going to be fun.

My next class was “Seeking Safety” with Ms. Carole Carsey. The topic in this class was PTSD and the common patterns of PTSD. As I listened to everyone read the material I tried my hardest to hold back the tears but they just wouldn’t stop flowing. I cried the entire class. I remember clearly the one section that stood out to me was about how PTSD is often present with people who have addictions. Did I have PTSD? I mean I had been diagnosed with PTSD before because of a rape I survived years ago and my parents dying of AIDS when I was a child. But I just chalked it up to the doctors being quacks.

Was I an addict? I never did drugs a day in my life. Addicts were only people who used drugs, right? I couldnt sleep the night after the class. I remember just laying on my rock hard bunk muddling back and forth in my mind as tears wet up my make shift pillow. With more seeking safety classes I came to a truth that set me free. I am an addict. The Bible says the “the Love of money is the root of all evil”. I loved money; I am addicted to shopping and the facade of being successful with D&G pumps and Versace hand bags. No matter what I had to do to get these things the fact that I had them made me “somebody”. I was no better than the drug addict who ignored there children to get high. I ignored mine to shop and work so I could shop. I never prostituted my body but I prostituted my mind and God given knowledge to attribute to the next money earning scam.

Truth… I learned in Resolana in those hard tan chairs, I am an addict and I have PTSD. The way I coped with my PTSD was to do my addicted behaviors.

To the inmate considering Resolana… Girl go! Don’t fall victim to your fifty million excuses. Yes, it will be change to move pods and leave the people you may have gotten close to. But in the end: Now is the time to allow God as you understand him to save you from you. The volunteers of Resolana love you even if they don’t know you. And get this: they love you and don’t expect anything in return. They’re the extension of Gods arms at DCJ. If you’re tired of life being horrible, the change starts with You! So sign up today and I’ll read your story later on in the Resolana newsletter!

To the Funder wondering if they should support Resolana…I’m pretty sure you’ve heard the many statistics of recidivism. Only a small percentage of women don’t go back to jail after being released. It’s a destructive cycle that affects children, grand parents, siblings, aunts, uncles the list goes on and on.

BUT Resolana is striving to stop the cycle. It’s not an easy task by far. As a former recidivist I can boldly and honestly say they helped me realize the core reason for my destructive cycle. That is what I needed to stop it. The best analogy I can think of is: when I garden, I always try to pull up the weeds at the root. Sometimes my arms feel like I’ve had a work out afterwards, but when I pull the root, the weed won’t come back. But after I’ve pulled the root, I must then fill that hole with good soil. Resolana helped me acknowledge many weeds in my life and together myself, Jennifer, Carol, Lesley, Heidi, and Roslyn (just to name a few) all put in the woman power to pull it up. Daily I still use alot of the tools they taught me to
fill the hole.

Your support of Resolana will help many women just like me, (and their children, husbands, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles) STOP the cycle. Just know you’re not just donating to another great cause, you’re donating to a weed pulling, hole filingl-in organizationof women helping women to live life as whole women (LOL).

Tell about what happened when you were released from DCJ — where did you go for help and what have you accomplished since your release.

I was released from DCJ in May, 2011. I was there for 8 almost nine total months and upon my release, I had to comply with all the stipulations of Probation and the demands of being a mother, wife and business owner. So I made sure to took care of myself first. Being released with this new found truth is scary and the steps you take can make you or break you. I was blessed to find a sponsor before I got out so I stuck closely to my sponsor in Debtors Anonymous I went to alot of meetings and bounced all of my major decisions off of her.

I also reached out to DARS and SBDC [the Small Business Development Center] of Dallas to receive help with getting my business back on track. I was blessed that it remained alive while I was gone. DARS helps people with disabilities with work related issues:. PTSD is a disability! SBDC has a program strictly for the ex-offender. It was a daily grind, but with the grace and favor of God, I did get my business back open. I had the opportunity to hire one of my fellow Resolana class mates upon her release from prison to help me run my shop. I have recently had to scale things down again because of my high risk pregnancy, but I’ll be back full blast when my new baby makes his grand entrance and we’re both recouped.

Before I forget to add this: one of the most important resources I accessed was my relationship with the God of my understanding: Jesus Christ. Alot of times, we addicts get in jail and grow so close to God, but then we exit and forget Him. I daily still struggle with this, but I feel my life is changing for the better mainly because I try to maintain a similar devotion time with God now as I did when I was in Jail!

While taking one day at a time in getting my business back on track and taking care of myself the addict, I also reached out to a counselor who used to bring parenting classes into the jail: Heidi with the Child Abuse Prevention Center. Heidi comes to our home and meets with me and my husband once a week and my children one day a week. She has been counseling us weekly now for 10 months. She counsels us on marriage, communication, budgeting, parenting and much more. We even talk about how to potty train a very stubborn two year old.

I am so grateful for the resources I was exposed to in Resolana.

Any further reflections related to your experience in jail, Resolana or reentry?

Reflections: I don’t want anyone to read this article and think “man she’s really got it all together”. That’s far from the truth! I have to revisit the 12 steps often. I have to remind myself that I am an addict and I can never think or act like ”I’ve got this” because it’s at that moment that relapse is right around the corner. I can be really selfish and no matter how much I want the think it’s all about me, it’s not! So the one thing I hope anyone reading this article gets about me is that life is not and has not been easy but with God on my side, nothing is impossible! And no matter what you’ve been through, know that with God nothing is impossible! I am a living witness.

When’s your baby due? What are your future plans?

Here we grow again. Joshua Nicholas Wright is due April 18th. I don’t think Ill make it that long however! [Kirstin had preeclampsia and Joshua was born on March 27, 2012.]

My future plans are to continue to take things slowly! I am planning to continue to work as an optician running my shop after I have the baby and I also have some plans in the making to start a nonprofit organization for young girls. It’s always been my dream to own a children’s counseling and recreation center. That’s the long term dream, so the short term steps are just to get the foundation laid and go from there.

Welcome Amy Gill, new Executive Director of Resolana

Amy Gill, new Executive Director of Resolana

We’re excited to introduce you to Amy Souders Gill, the new Executive Director of Resolana!

Unanimously selected by Resolana’s Board of Directors after an extensive search, Amy will take the helm of Resolana on April 9.

Amy joins Resolana at a vital turning point for the organization, according to founder Bette Buschow.

“The next steps for Resolana lie in organizational development and capacity building,” Bette explains. “Amy has the ideal background to take us to the next level in these areas. Her experience and passion for our mission uniquely qualify her to lead Resolana in the years ahead.”

Amy is the former Director of Development & Public Relations at Nexus Recovery Center, which
provides specialized substance abuse assistance to Dallas women.

Amy has a master’s degree in public administration as well as criminology, and began her
career as a parole officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Her background
includes work in the non-profit sector at the Mental Health Association of Greater Dallas and
with the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance. She has also spent about seven years working in city
government in Frisco.

In talking about the transition to a new leader, Amy says, “I am honored to accept the reins from Bette — without her vision and leadership, the women within the Dallas County jail system would not have access to life-altering programs that empower incarcerated women. I am 100% committed to Resolana’s mission and look forward to working with all the people who make this wonderful program possible.”

“We are very fortunate that Bette will remain as Program Director,” adds Fran Tynan, President of Resolana’s Board of Directors.  ”Programming is Bette’s first love, and her continued involvement with Resolana will ensure that there will be zero interruption in the vital services we provide.”

Amy Gill with Fran Tynan, Resolana President (far right) and Mary Beth Bardin, the chair of the search committee (left)

Women in [Prison] Photography

Kristin S Wilkins. Untitled #8, 2011. From the series 'Supplication'. When asked what she missed outside prison, she said, “I miss my hometown. Everything about it.”

In today’s visually oriented culture, it is difficult to draw attention to important societal issues without the benefit of value-adding images. And the women imprisonment theme, as important as it is, falls in this category. Although many texts have been written on the topic, the absence of images and the difficulties in creating them is very often  an obstacle for the words’ full impact and the wider understanding of this issue.

Pete Brook, a writer focusing on the politics of visual culture and issues of social justice in photography, has curated a series of images on prisons that helps fill that vast void. Although not exclusively related to women, the series offers some insightful points about women imprisonment and showcases some projects related to them. For example, photographer Marilyn Suriani visited a women’s prison in Atlanta, made portraits and then ran a six-week workshop in which the women could make their own images.

In fact, the most poignant photographs from the series are those related to women. They counter the invisibility of people in prison, reveal their humanity and spur our commitment in changing the worrying trends. From the curator’s statement:

In the past 40 years, America’s prison population has more than quadrupled from under 500,000 to over 2.3 million. This program of mass incarceration is unprecedented in human history. Women have born the brunt of this disastrous growth. Within that fourfold increase, the female prison population has increased eightfold. You heard right: women are incarcerated today at eight times the number they were in the early 1970s. Are women really eight times more dangerous as they were two generations ago?

Click here to view the full series:  Women in [Prison] Photography

International Women’s Day for women in prison, too

The International Women’s Day came to be, in part, to honor the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, an industrial accident in which hundreds of women workers died in the heart of the garment district in New York City. The owners had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits, which was a common practice at the time. The justification – to prevent unauthorized breaks and pilferage – was accepted as totally legitimate by society since those women, poor recent immigrants most of them, were commonly seen as untrustworthy and lazy.

After that horrific fire some people, yet again, blamed the women themselves for their fate. They could have avoided it, if they had refused to work in those conditions; since they accepted working there, they consciously accepted the possibility of such an accident taking place, too.  Today it may seem strange, but at that time some didn’t understand that those young immigrants women lacked the social power to demand conditions

This practice of placing the responsibility on the victim can still be seen today, in a social system that does not recognize the factors of trauma, social limitations and pressures in the life of women who are currently in jail. Not to justify their transgressions of the law, but to understand why they take place and to prevent a growing social problem, it is important to recognize how the interplay of empowerment and choices works so that we as a society right the conditions to prevent it in the future. You can’t fully and freely exercise your responsibility if your life experience limits your choices and converts many of them into all that more difficult – and unlikely – to make. It makes much more sense to remove those obstacles rather than take the easier path of making the victim bear the consequences.

Here are two articles illuminating the process.

Rick Halperin, director of SMU’s Human Rights Program, shared this article, “Record Numbers of Incarcerated Mothers Bad News for Women, Children, Communities“, about the reason the number of women in the criminal justice system have been increasing at twice the rate of men.

“People who commit nonviolent drug and property crimes tend to go in and out, over and over, because if it’s addiction or economic issues driving the crime, it does not get solved, it only gets exacerbated by people being removed from the community,” says one of the interviewees.

The article makes clear that heaping all the consequences on the victim makes the problem even worse and creates a vicious cycle that only generates more incarceration.

Denton Record-Chronicle in a piece, aptly titled “Minding the Gap“, shows the extent to which mental health issues both cause growing incarceration in the Dallas area and are further exacerbated by it.

Welcome to the Dallas County Jail, where the psychiatric unit treats more than 1,400 patients a day, nearly a quarter of the jail’s total population

… This ballooning predicament — more patients, fewer professionals and dissipating resources — means the county jail is likely to continue as the primary provider of mental health services in most Texas communities.

How do we stop this gradual, invisible yet growing avalanche accident from rolling? It is not sudden and highly visible as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which helped put in place working conditions for working women with little power and voice to demand them for themselves. We as a society need to put in place conditions today to prevent it – obviously the women involved don’t have the power and voice to just remove them from their lives.

Success in the Community

By Bette Buschow, Resolana founder and director

After incarcerated women are released back into the community, they have the responsibility to not follow the paths that had led them to jail originally. Common sense would predict that after the jail experience, they would and should do everything in their power to avoid getting there again. However, it may be much, much harder for them without additional help.

Why do incarcerated women need help when they are released back into the community? Stephanie Covington, co-director of the Center for Gender and Justice and the author of numerous studies in the area of women’s issues, talks about “level of burden,” defined as the number and severity of problems that women face. Most incarcerated women have a high level of burden compared to women from other walks of life, which means that they have to face more challenges trying to restart their lives.

The fact that two thirds of them have children adds an additional level of burden. And remember, in Texas, individuals with a drug felony (which means a lot of incarcerated women!) are banned FOR LIFE from receiving food stamps, Section 8 housing, and most educational or welfare assistance. Job prospects may be difficult for them.  To make it worse, their immediate environment, circle of friends or family does not offer the support necessary to get onto a stable life or may be even part of the problem. Instead of correcting the obstacles that prevented these women to find stability before going to prison in the first place, the rules society has put into place seem to make it even more difficult afterwards.

The WPA in New York has graphically listed some of the challenges in a very thoughtful chart at
http://wpaonline.org/pdf/WPA_Success_in_the_Community_Matrix_6.11.pdf

The obstacles are daunting . . .  But there are many things that can be done.