TAFT — When Misty Lindgren arrived at Eddie Warrior Correctional Center on Sept. 3, she was full of conflicting emotions.

“I was anxious, I was fearful, scared, just a whole bunch of emotions flooded me,” Lindgren, 24, said. “I was kind of happy at the same time because I knew that this was the last step before home. When I got into the Regimented Treatment Program I knew it would be between eight and 12 months later before I was going home.”

Lindgren is one of thousands of women incarcerated in Oklahoma Corrections facilities.

Oklahoma leads the nation in incarcerating women, with 134 per 100,000 imprisoned, compared to a national average of 69 per 100,000, said Leon Frost, unit manager and program director at Eddie Warrior Correctional Center. Those women are held at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center, Eddie Warrior Correctional Center, and some community and private facilities.

Lindgren is in prison at Eddie Warrior after being convicted of possession of methamphetamine and paraphernalia.

“I started using drugs at the age of 12,” she said. “Started off with marijuana. Eventually, by the time I was 15 I was doing meth on a daily basis, going down that path has taken me down a path I never want to see again. I’ve lived on the streets, I’ve left my child with my parents, abandoned him, lost really close friendships, lost job opportunities, wound up dropping out of school.”

Lindgren said she had a normal childhood but fell into the drug lifestyle.

“It was a carefree lifestyle, not having any responsibilities, doing whatever I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, a selfish lifestyle, fast money.”

Lindgren has a good chance of going home this year if she completes the court-ordered Regimented Treatment Program.

RTP is a military-style program. The last four months of the program the offender begins substance abuse treatment classes. She then has a 120-day countdown before she can go home.

“You start off with a skinner band (a white arm band), which means you can’t eat anything besides from the chow hall,” she said. “You can’t have canteen food, no snacking, anything like that for your first 60 days in the program. If you come out of your skinner band, you get to eat and order food from the canteen.”

Lindgren said a part of RTP is substance abuse treatments. Once the offender has made it that far, she moves up and gets different privileges.

“You get to shower longer, you get to wear you hair down, with different phases, you get to wear makeup, prizes, things like that,” she said. “You get to order more food on the canteen with the higher phases you go up. More phone calls to your family and things like that.”

RTP prohibits any communication with the general population and only allows contact with other people in the program.

“So, if I have a cousin who’s out in the yard, I can’t even have eye contact with that person,” she said. “I can’t even look in that person’s direction or else that would be considered communication. They would put me back in my skinner band for a sanction, which could eventually lead to me being kicked out of the program.”

But there are benefits to help the offender grow, Lindgren said.

“I think this is a wonderful experience; I truly do,” she said. “It has all kinds of things to offer. You can go to career tech and various classes, you can go to figure out why you were doing the things you were doing, that teaches you drug abuse is not a disease, it’s a learned behavior, so that way you can learn not to go into the past behaviors that you learned before.”

Lindgren’s job in RTP is a scribe, which means she and another offender who is a clerk work in the office running errands for the unit manager and counselors, and printing papers.

“So, that’s instilled a lot of trust in me, it’s given me more confidence in myself, it means I can bring my self-esteem up,” she said. “Being out there in the drug world brings you down like you’ve never been before. I’m taking away a lot of the doubt I had in myself, that I’m not going to have to live with this so-called disease for the rest of my life, I can build beyond this and really make something of myself.”

Frost said that the goal at Eddie Warrior is to reduce recidivism and help clear Oklahoma’s reputation as a state that imprisons more women than anyone else. He said Eddie Warrior doesn’t have any problems with ethnic or gang subcultures.

Statistics show Oklahoma’s women’s prisons are racially mixed:

• Caucasian — 57.6 percent.

• African American — 25.5 percent.

• Native American — 12.6 percent.

• Hispanic — 4.0 percent.

• Asian — 0.3 percent.

• Other — 0.1 percent.

The average age of a female prisoner in Oklahoma is 36.9.

Although prison life may offer character-improvement programs and classes, there’s no escaping the fact that the offender is locked up.

At Eddie Warrior, they offer “Play Day” about three times a year to reunite mothers and children. Despite it’s good intentions, it can be bittersweet, said one of the offenders, Allison Presgrove. During a recent Play Day, she was playing games with her children Katie, 6, and Ethan, 9.

“This is about as important as it gets,” she said. “This is one of those lifetime memories you’ll always have. I went from seeing them every day to not seeing them or hugging them for seven months.”



Women in Prison

• There were 1,284 female offenders received into the Oklahoma Department of Corrections in Fiscal Year 2009.

• There were 2,651 female prisoners at the end of Fiscal Year 2009. Of these:

• 67.7 percent were for nonviolent offenses.

• 51.6 percent were for drug offenses.

Source: Oklahoma Department of Corrections Female Offender Operations, FY 2009 Annual Report



Solutions Initiative Summit

On April 30, individuals and organizations concerned about Oklahoma's women's incarceration rates will gather in Oklahoma City.This statewide summit will formulate a state action plan.

Registration space is limited. Information: Pam Richardson, 694-4892 or e-mail prichardson@resonancetulsa.org

Information: http://oklahomasis.com/





Reach Keith Purtell at 918-684-2925 or Click Here to Send Email