Pubdate: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 Source: Peterborough This Week (CN ON) Copyright: Metroland Printing, Publishing and Distributing Contact: http://www.mykawartha.com/peterborough-on/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1794 Author: Todd Vandonk WHY DO WOMEN END UP IN JAIL? Usually They Start Out As Victims Who Use Drugs to Numb Their Pain, Then Live to Feed Their Addiction Amy takes her first toke of crack when she is 15 years old. Childhood memories of her drunk father pointing a rifle at her on Christmas Day and her stepfather raping her multiple times are lost in the euphoria that allows her to escape reality. But the heavenly high is short lived. It always is. For the next 18 years, Amy goes to any lengths to find her next fix. "It is an easy way out, so you continue and you find it numbs the pain and it gets you through," says Amy, now 33. "I hate the nightmares," she adds. "I find that if I am not using for three or four days, I get the nightmares back and I hate it." Amy, a local drug user who asked we don't use her real name, was homeless at 14 years old. She couch surfed and often slept in a cubbyhole downstairs at the now TVA Manor building, at the corner of Stewart and McDonnel streets. "I couldn't go home because she (her mother) chose to stay with the guy that went to jail for raping me, rather than look after me," she says. As a teenage addict with no education, Amy had to survive on her own, which meant, run-in after run-in with the law. "When you are on drugs you don't give a shit how you get the money," she says. "You lose your morals, lose self respect, you lose everything." Amy is not alone. According to Trent University professor Gillian Balfour, a specialist in feminist criminology, studies show between 65 and 85 per cent of women in the criminal justice system reported experience of victimization before breaking the law themselves. "Many of them (women who have been victimized) will end up using drugs or alcohol as way of coping," says Prof. Balfour. "It is a fast projectory to street-level crime, where they are involved in prostitution, or becoming involved in drug-related offences." Amy says there are easily 100 women roaming Peterborough streets with stories similar to hers and the girls are getting younger with their crimes escalating. Statistics from Dalhousie Youth Support Services (DYSS), which helps youth that have been in conflict with the law, show that 72 per cent of its 43 female youth clients between 2010 and 2013 were charged with assault. Another 44 per cent were referred to the agency because of substance abuse. "Most of the girls referred here are for the anger-management program or substance-abuse program," explains DYSS executive director Karen Carr. "More than half of our clients have had Children's Aid Society involvement, so that tells us they are typically coming from abusive backgrounds." Of the charges they see at DYSS, common assault is at the top of the list while they also see girls facing assault with a weapon and assault peace officer chargers. "They try to hustle and sell drugs to support their habits and that's when people get robbed," she explains. "People are coming in with guns and people are pulling knives. The stab rate is crazy and there's always people getting hurt." Prof. Balfour says the numbers clearly show an increase in the involvement of young women in violent crimes but she cautions to be wary of the numbers. "There's so few woman and girls involved in the criminal system (compared to men) that any numerical increase is a huge percentage increase and it is always important to look at the raw numbers," she says. She says incarceration numbers are troubling with women being the fastest-growing prison population globally and in Canada. "We are creating more legislation which empowers us to criminalize more and yet we are cutting back more on community-based resources, so they are going to jail because they are addicted to crack or have significant mental health problems," Prof. Balfour explains. Amy was in jail by the time she turned 18. She racked up 15 charges in two months, including mischief, possession of crack and assault with a weapon after stabbing her boyfriend. "He locked the cellphone and I couldn't call the dealer and I flipped out," Amy says, noting she was drunk at the time. She served two months in pre-sentence custody and was sentenced to 18 months of probation. There was no help for her when she was released from jail. "People can't be helped unless they want to be helped, but at least give them that opportunity to see a different side," she says. "They need to see that they are more important than what they feel. I felt that no one gave a shit about me, so why would I care about myself?" Amy says more needs to be done on the inside because girls come out from behind bars and just re-offend, although stats show repeat women offenders are much fewer then re-offending men. "I know this girl that keeps re-offending. She gets out and doesn't follow her probation or doesn't go to court because she is too high," Amy says. "Why would you not put her in treatment where they keep her for so long, because obviously she is not trying to do anything differently?" Prof. Balfour says the provincial system is a revolving door with a high level of the women there on remand and pre-trial custody, so legally there's no obligation to provide programming. "Women shouldn't have to end up in the criminal justice system in order for someone to notice that she is actually in crisis," explains Prof. Balfour. She says more dollars need to be spent in the community instead of multi-million dollar super jails. "As a criminologist, I can say prisons don't work," she notes. "If prisons worked, the United States would have the lowest crime rate in the world." The Elizabeth Fry Society of Peterborough advocates and provides services for all criminalized and imprisoned women, as well as those at risk of criminalization. "We actively work to keep women out of prison for minor and non-violent crimes because we don't feel it is accomplishing anything positive for the women or community," says Patricia Zimmer, executive director at Elizabeth Fry. "It is not about reducing responsibility. It is about having women taking responsibility for their actions and then doing something that will actually make a change." In the first seven months of 2013, the society dealt with 185 clients at the courthouse and provided them with some kind of support on 648 occasions. "Often women who are coming into the system over and over again suffer from mental health issues, poverty and addictions," Ms. Zimmer says. And jail isn't a place for a women with mental health issues because they are generally more likely to self injure themselves which lands them in segregation. "It has very ruinous effects on woman," she says. "If you are in crisis and get shoved into segregation, it isn't going to end well and really it is a self-defeating response." Sending women to jail often leads to them losing their children as most of them are single mothers, according to Prof. Balfour. "That is what really sent me over the deep end," explains Amy. She was pregnant with her son when she went to jail the first time at 18 years old. She says the Children's Aid Society originally took him because her boyfriend was abusive but her addiction kept her from ever being part of his life. "When they took my son, I started prostituting. I didn't care and I was doing needles every day," she says. "They won't let me see him or give me pictures." Although she is trying to turn her life around, clean from needles and pills for three years, she still uses crack to cope with the memories of her childhood and the loss of her child who she hasn't seen since age one. "I still use crack as much as possible," she says, noting that she last spent 15 days in jail a year ago after breaching her probation. "You do it and you want more. It is just retarded and it is a vicious cycle that keeps going around." - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom