ESSEX COUNTY FEMALE PAROLEES GET SOME MUCH-NEEDED SUPPORT
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Newark - (WBGO News 10/27/2009)

Women make up the single fastest growing population in prisons and jails in the US. A pilot program at Essex County Community College is helping women offenders not to repeat the mistakes of their past. 

Chelsea Ward has been in and out of prison since she was 16-years-old. The Newark resident says she always gone back to drugs in her previous parole periods. But the last time was different.

“I repeated because I didn’t have a good family structure in my life … and I didn’t have role models like I do here now that tell me to do different things.”

The Female Offender Reentry Group Effort – or FORGE – is the first documented program in the country to offers reentry services and support group sessions for female offenders in addition to their parole supervision. Rutgers University’s Dr. Heather Tubman-Carbone says women parolees have different needs then their men counterparts, and the program addresses issues of domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse and other trauma.

“Equality is not that women are the same as men. It’s giving women the same attention and the same understanding as men, and understanding what makes them tick? What works? What doesn’t?”

Dr. Tubman-Carbone’s research shows women in the program had a 28 percent lower rate of recidivism compared to those who didn’t participate in the program.   

© 10/27/2009 WBGO News