Tulsa Community Women's Reentry Project

Created by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections Division of Female Offender Operations in partnership with Resonance Center for Women, Inc., the Tulsa Community Women's Reentry Project has been in operation since April 2011. The project's goal is to help female offenders find jobs within 30 days of prison release. To qualify, one must be a non-violent female offender with children, who will be returning to Tulsa upon release and who has a parole officer.  Project leaders begin meeting with these women 3 to 6 months prior to their release.  Upon release, they receive a reentry basket filled with necessities. They enter work readiness classes, get help finding child care and, if necessary, receive substance abuse  treatment. On graduation after 6 months, the women receive a professional mentor. The project is took 100 women during the first year. This effort is funded by a federal grant with additional funding from the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa. 

Pam Richardson, Amy Santee Discuss Incarceration of Women

Pam Richardson (left), CEO of Resonance Center for Women in Tulsa and Amty Santee (right) with the George Kaiser Family Foundation talked about efforts under way to reduct the incarceration rate of women in Oklahoma. We currently rank #1 in the United States (and #3 for men) per capita.

Suzanne Edmondson Inducted into Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame

Suzanne Edmondson began a new career in 1996 as a corrections volunteer focusing ion issues affecting incarcerated women. She became a literacy tutor and began working weekly at Eddie Warrior Correctional Center, a minimum security facility housing about 650 women in Taft, OK. She founded the Friends of Eddie Warrior Foundation and through the foundation created a program called "Tales for the Rising Moon" in which inmates tape bedtime stories for their children at home. She also started a foundation to provide college scholarships to the women inmates at Eddie Warrior Correctional Center.

Incarceration: State Names Laura Pitman Prison's Chief of Women

Oklahoma ranks #1 in the USA at incarcerating women, per capita (over 2,700 at present). In fact, we lock up more women per capita than any developed nation inthe world! So it is wonderful that the state has hired a deputy director of female offender operations. She is Laura J Pitmanand she begins her job December 15. Her long-term goal:

reduce the number of women in Oklahoma’s prisons and implement programs inside the system to help women deal with mental health and trauma issues.

Read Oklahoman article here.

Incarceration of Women in Oklahoma

A recent AlterNet article reports Oklahoma's incarceration of women ranks us as:

"one of the highest per capita rates -- 129 per 100,000 residents, a figure that is right behind Texas, the federal system and California. Oklahoma’s imprisonment of women rose a stunning 1,237 percent from 1997 to 2004."

The author, Silja J.A. Talvi, focuses on drug addiction as a contributing cause for so many women in prison today. Talvi is an investigative journalist and the author of Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System which was published in 2007 by Seal Press, a publishing house "by women, for women."

New center to process state's female inmates

This Oklahoman article says female inmates will no longer go to Lexington for intake. Instead, a new assessment and reception center is opening at Mabel Bassett. It also reports that "Oklahoma has the highest incarceration rate for women among the 50 states."

We're number one . . . woopee.