The Kindness Matters Podcast
So. Much. Division. Let's talk about how to change that. Re-engage as neighbors, friends, co-workers and family. Let's set out to change the world. Strike that. Change A World. One person at a time, make someone's life a little better and then do it again tomorrow and the day after that, through kindness.
Kindness is a Super-Power that each of us has within us. It is so powerful it has the potential to change not only your life but those around you, too. Let's talk about kindness.
The Kindness Matters Podcast
Justice and Reform for Incarcerated Mothers
How do we ensure kindness and justice in a prison system not designed with women in mind? Join us for a compelling episode where we welcome Colleen Bell, chair of the Ostara Initiative's board of directors, as she reveals the stark realities and urgent needs of incarcerated mothers. Discover the transformative work Ostara is doing to challenge inhumane practices like shackling during labor and high rates of C-sections, setting new standards for maternal and child health within prisons. Colleen shares inspiring stories of change from Minnesota to Alabama's Tutwiler Prison, highlighting advancements in lactation support that not only benefit mothers and babies but also offer financial advantages for states willing to embrace such reforms.
In a thought-provoking discussion, we illuminate the vital role of doulas who provide crucial emotional and physical support to pregnant women in prison, empowering them amidst systemic failures. Distinguishing the essential contributions of doulas from midwives and OBGYNs, we confront misconceptions about the adequacy of prison healthcare and spotlight the unique challenges faced by women in a system primarily designed for men. We also tackle broader issues such as societal neglect of the root causes of women's incarceration, from trauma to survival crimes, asking tough questions about the humanity and effectiveness of our current penal system. Don't miss this episode as we advocate for transformative change in pursuit of kindness and justice. If you're interested in more information on women in the judicial system you may want to check out loads of charts, brief reports and a great search function at the Prison Policy Initiative.
#justice #women #incarceration
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Well, hello there and welcome. You are listening to the Kindness Matters podcast and I am your host, Mike Rathbun. What is this podcast all about? It's about kindness. It's a pushback against everything negative that we see in the news and on social media today, and it's a way to highlight people, organizations that are simply striving to make their little corner of the world a little better place. If you want to join in on the conversation, feel free, Go ahead and follow us on all of your social media feeds. We're on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. We're even on LinkedIn under Mike Rathbun. Check us out. We're even on LinkedIn under Mike Rathbun. Check us out. And in the meantime, so sit back, relax, enjoy and we'll get into the Kindness Matters podcast. Hey, good morning, Well good, whatever time you're listening. Folks, Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I am so happy to have you. I'm honored that you chose to take some time out of your life to listen to the show. Remember, if there's anything in this podcast that you find moving or inspiring or motivating, please share it with your friends and family and anybody else who you think would benefit from it. So today on our podcast, I have the great honor of welcoming Colleen Bell.
Speaker 1:Colleen has a distinguished career, marked by her service on the board of directors of the Ostara Initiative, where she currently serves as a chair. Her academic contributions are significant, having taught students at Hamlin University from 1990 through 2020 in fields such as conflict studies, women's and gender studies and social justice studies. Among the highlights of her teaching career are the Inside Out courses she conducted in 2017 and 2018 at the Shakopee Correctional Facility. These courses, which included students both from the campus and within the prison, stand out as some of the peak experiences of her career. In addition to her tenure at Hamlin University, Colleen has taught at the University of Tulsa, University of Illinois and the College of St Scholastica. I knew I was going to mess that one up. Beyond her academic endeavors, she is also a dedicated gardener and a writer, currently focusing on unlearning academic speak to embrace a more authentic expression of her thoughts and ideas. Thank you so much for taking the time, Colleen. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Not bad for AI huh.
Speaker 2:Not bad, yes.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was the first time I have ever had AI write an introduction for me. It was okay. I didn't speak so well, but the intro itself was okay, so let's talk about. I mean, we were going to talk mostly about Ostara and what they do, but this is more of a general conversation about basically, women in the judicial system, right?
Speaker 2:more of a general conversation about basically, women in the judicial system. Right yeah, I call it the criminal legal system, because justice is so often missing. Got it, especially when you think about individual women who are impacted by the system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we tend to group and we all do it. I think to a certain extent you go women criminal justice system and you take the individuality, you take the human being out of that and that's where we tend to get into trouble. I think, yeah, so talk about what does Ostara do and how did it start?
Speaker 2:Well, it did start in Minnesota, at Shakopee. This was in about, I think, 2010. Erica Garrity, who continues to lead Ostara, started the Minnesota Prison Doula Project with Raylene Baker Both doulas, both recognizing some of the issues that affect babies long-term when their moms are incarcerated during their birth. So one thing that happens in women's facilities is, especially when staffing is short, women are scheduled to give birth by C-section rather than having a natural birth. That is bad, we know, in the long term for women's health, but also for babies. So the rate of C-sections in the nation actually care and natural birth is actually a big money saver for the state. So C-sections cost a lot more than natural births. So that is a major problematic health trend that's been turned around in Minnesota. That's not true everywhere. So the prison doula program started. The one that started in Minnesota also involved working against shackling women during labor and delivery.
Speaker 1:Wait. So women were shackled during labor and delivery.
Speaker 2:Pregnant women. Imagine someone who's nine months pregnant, who's not gone into labor yet, probably, but put in a van to be transported to the local hospital Belly chains, with wrists chained to the belly and ankle chains you know it's. The American Medical Association has made it very clear that this is such a risk to moms, to babies and liability, frankly, for the Department of Corrections. So that has been changed in many states. There are still 10 states, though, that have no prohibitions, no laws about shackling pregnant women.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. Yeah, nothing like pointing out a cost savings to get somebody to perk up and take notice, right.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly notice, right, Exactly so now. And you guys, you were not satisfied with just Minnesota.
Speaker 2:You expanded this initiative, correct? True, I think that was not necessarily an initial goal. But gosh, I'm not sure of the year, but at one point Tutwiler Prison, the state prison for women in Alabama, was called out for custodial rape, in other words, women who are incarcerated going in not pregnant but becoming impregnated while they're there. The Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice at the federal level gave Alabama notice. If you don't clean this up, we will come in and take over. At that point, people in Alabama reached out to the folks in Minnesota about maternal and child health inside prisons. So we now partner with the Alabama Prison Birth Project and they actually. Tutwiler is now one of the cutting edge prisons in the nation when it comes to lactation. So they now have a breast pumping room, milk so the moms can pump milk after they've given birth and they are separated from their babies, but the milk gets to the babies outside the prison. That was true in Alabama before. It was true in Minnesota. It is now true in Minnesota.
Speaker 1:That's a good thing.
Speaker 2:Alabama surprised everyone by taking the lead there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just kind of a human decency thing, isn't it? I mean to give women their own space, if you will, to pump milk for their babies.
Speaker 2:And I think, if you think about the babies as the people who will eventually be in charge of this society, it makes no sense to punish them. They have done nothing wrong and you know the whole. I've heard people say when a woman is incarcerated, a whole family is incarcerated, and there are some local groups that are working on the notion that the community is affected, because very often what women are doing in the community is organizing, supporting, doing home care, and so when you pull someone out, it's not punishing just her kids or the immediate family. There are many more people who are affected.
Speaker 1:For sure. Yeah, I mean, if you think about all the ways that the women impact communities, it's just, and I mean to be fair, we're not saying that no woman should ever go, not go to prison.
Speaker 2:No, and I think most incarcerated women with whom I've been in touch in class or otherwise would not say they don't want to take responsibility. The question is more one of the way. For example, the way some prisons in Europe do this is think about the sanctity of the mother-child bond, not just from a physical health perspective, but a mental health perspective, a community perspective, a longer-term perspective, and so babies are not separated from their moms in many European prisons. That's maybe another conversation, but a group of people from OSARA did travel to some European prisons last year and we'll be coming out with a white paper on that what we learned there in 2025. So stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they provide space for the child and the mother to be imprisoned at the same time.
Speaker 2:Imprisoning kids doesn't sound right. They live together, their street closed. They eat together, kids, their street clothes.
Speaker 1:they eat together. Kids leave and go to school and come back. Yeah, so, and yeah, you've got a kind of a double-edged sword there. I mean, if somebody's listening to this and they think, oh wow, the kid's in prison too, yeah, but they're with their mom.
Speaker 2:Yes. And the conditions are not like they are in our prisons. It's viewed as a temporary way of repaying community for harm inflicted and in this society largely it's very difficult to outlive your punishment. Even if you're only in for a year, you still will have trouble getting a driver's license, getting a job, getting housing. You know it's just extremely difficult to reenter society.
Speaker 1:Sure, absolutely. So now, do you just work with federal prisons, or is it others?
Speaker 2:We started with Shakopee, which is the state prison for women, and most of our other facilities are in the states, but we also work with three counties in Minnesota and five federal prisons. So overall we have 19 different facilities where we serve clients across seven different states.
Speaker 1:And I guess Oregon just joined as well.
Speaker 2:That's right, Oregon, oh my goodness. And in that facility women actually wear their own clothes, not uniforms.
Speaker 1:Talk about human decency thing allowing a convicted person to wear their own clothing. That's got to be huge for their own mental health.
Speaker 2:The morale is yeah, it makes a huge difference.
Speaker 1:So, and I think you know, most people probably don't even really think too much about women in prison and there might be a lot of myths or misunderstandings. Can you maybe go through some of those?
Speaker 2:Sure, I mean. The first thing is if we think about people who are incarcerated in the largest incarcerating nation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're right up there with incarcerating our own citizens.
Speaker 2:And most US states also incarcerate more people than the most incarcerating nations. So the Prison Policy Initiative is a nonprofit that puts together some very interesting charts. If people want to compare their own state's incarceration level with various countries elsewhere in the world, that is the place to go in the world, that is the place to go. But also just thinking about what people don't know or understand or think about about women in prison only about 7% of people who are locked up in the United States are women. Prisons were designed for men by men. The fact that only seven percent of people incarcerated are female makes it easy for people to ignore.
Speaker 1:I was going to say, that makes it easier for them to not think about it.
Speaker 2:Justice impacted folks, but you know there's another. This is still kind of on the broad general scheme of things. About 2 million people in this country are behind bars, 7% of which are women, but that is only about half. Actually, it's less than half of the people who are under control of the correctional system, because there are all these things that people have to do when they leave prison. So there's probation, there's parole, there's community corrections, and you can't screw up even when you're not behind bars, because you will be sent back to prison in many cases, and that is going back to prison not for committing a crime, but for not following the massive, detailed rules that are expected of people.
Speaker 1:Missing a call from your PO or what have you Community supervision?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, so that's extremely important to remember when we talk about the population.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you have the number of people that are incarcerated, but that doesn't include the number of people who are on parole or supervised release. I'm not exactly sure what that is.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, and it also doesn't it? Usually, I mean, when people talk about prison, it's either federal or state or tribal, but it doesn't talk about jails, and jails are at the county level, usually sentences of less than a year. So that's another chunk of people and a lot of women land in jails.
Speaker 1:As opposed to prison.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're even less well. Jails are less well equipped to take care of women's health. There are some pretty egregious things, as you know probably from the news, that happen in our county jails. Yeah, for sure I also wanted to just say, because we're talking about birth, the figures are very hard to pin down in terms of how many women are pregnant when they're inside. There was a 2019 study that we rely on. It pegged it at about 4 to 5 percent of incarcerated women at any one time are pregnant.
Speaker 1:So women are 7% of the prison population and 4% to 5% of that number is pregnant. Now, is that pregnant when they go in, or do they differentiate?
Speaker 2:They really the data collection about this, just to reinforce the idea that women are neglected or ignored. Not really, it's a patchwork. States do it differently. The feds have rules, but states have their own rules, state by state, and, of course, state prisons. And and, of course, state prisons and legislation and crime laws. They vary across the states.
Speaker 1:So it's extremely difficult to do anything across the board. Yeah, it's hard to you have the federal rules and then, but every state you got 50, probably 50 different sets of rules on data collection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, even though pregnant women are such a tiny part of incarcerated women if you think just about the organization that I work with in seven states, 19 facilities just last year we delivered 17 babies and served 835 unique clients- that's incredible.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. Now, do the doulas, do the inmates, have to leave the prison to have the baby, or do you facilitate birthing inside the prison?
Speaker 2:No people go to hospitals, and I don't know this for a fact, but my guess is that that is a legal liability kind of concern because there are no physicians or nurses in the facilities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:But if it should happen and a doula were there, you know, unless there were some kind of physical complication, physical complication the doula would be there to support the mom. It's really important, I think, to understand what is the difference between a doula and, for example, a midwife or an OBGYN. Doulas provide physical, emotional and informational support before, during and after birth. So we're educating the moms about what's coming, we support them through the birthing process and then we stay connected to them afterwards. We do not provide medical care care. So what physical support looks like is maybe for a mom who's leaving the facility after giving birth and say her baby is a few months old, living with a relative, we might have to help her find housing if she's having a rough time. That's an example of physical support. That's an example of physical support. The emotional support is very, very powerful. Women often first being incarcerated and then being in the midst of labor, don't necessarily realize their power to say no, don't give me any drugs, for example. What if they're recovering from some sort of chemical dependence?
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know the physician wants to administer some kind of painkiller and the mom can say no and a doula can encourage the mom to speak her desire about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just because of the way the prison system is built and the control we assume is all within the prison system and I can see very easily how a woman would say I can't say I can't have that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, people are silenced, people are, they're not spoken to with their first name, so it's a very dehumanizing process. And then to dehumanize that sacred moment, I would say, of giving birth, it's incredible.
Speaker 1:So I think a lot of people have assumptions about women in prison. I think, for example, one of them might be that women and men who are involved in the system follow the same path.
Speaker 2:Not true, definitely not true. Yeah, women, about half, I think it is. Is that true? About half of women are there for drug or property crimes, is that?
Speaker 1:like the Carrie Underwood keying the truck kind of crime yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know where that fits, actually, because I'm not.
Speaker 1:When you said property crime, I just went there immediately. I don't know why.
Speaker 2:It's more often stealing food, that sort of thing. I think of them as survival crimes. So all of the chemical dependence issues, so drug possession, have to do usually with some kind of early trauma, childhood trauma and then self-medicating because our system of mental health care is so impoverished. Yeah, and so you know, when I first went into a state prison, I had no idea what to expect and I saw old women in wheelchairs. I saw people who were unable to speak English and there were no translators for their language. And you know what that gives rise to is women inside are not always, but often, compassionate toward one another.
Speaker 1:So I don't know why I was surprised by that, but that's encouraging.
Speaker 2:I mean the idea of a criminal. You know, we think of all the negativity but we don't think of why. And the system does not care why a person is using drugs or stealing food. Yeah, killing a partner a murder, it's totally. It happens often that moms who do that are protecting kids or protecting themselves. So if there's abuse in the situation, you know we're just very far behind places like Australia in terms of how we handle this sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw a stat the other day. In 2023, in the state of Minnesota, there were 40 murders related to domestic violence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was a record violence. Yeah, and that was a record.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay how about? Another assumption Women get what they need in prison.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh. Well, go back to the statement I made earlier about prisons being built by and for men. So that's the first problem. I can't even. I used to teach courses about this and I would ask the students is a feminist prison possible?
Speaker 1:Could you have a prison? Dedicated to the liberation of women and what would that look like that's a great thought experiment.
Speaker 2:Yes, very challenging, but let's just say that, in spite of the legal requirements that the state is responsible for those who are in its custody, health care in prisons generally is inadequate. Health care in prisons generally is inadequate and women's health care needs are different than men's.
Speaker 1:Just take the example of the food that a pregnant woman gets inside.
Speaker 2:What do they get? Well, the usual fare, which is, I would say, unappetizing at best from what I have seen and tasted. But a pregnant woman might get an extra piece of fruit a day, so she's not getting the calories she needs to grow that baby. Nor is she getting nutritional balance. If her family can buy her the multivitamins that pregnant women should take, she can have those.
Speaker 1:That's a big if, though, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely yes, so I would say no. In fact, I think that prisons are dangerous places for women. Thinking about custodial rape, thinking about women not getting the mental health care that they need, not getting drug treatment, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Which kind of leads us to the next misunderstanding or assumption which?
Speaker 2:is that women are safe when they're incarcerated, Right? No, and I think yes. Custodial rape is a part of that. Another part of it is the way that segregation is used, or solitary confinement that can be used used for any kind of punishment. So what if a woman is unable to give a urine sample when she is asked? If she cannot do that, if she cannot produce that, she might be sent to SEG. So it's all about compliance. But also women who have mental health issues if they act out or have some sort of an episode where they lose control, they might be sent to segregation. And what could be worse than isolating someone who's in a mental health crisis?
Speaker 1:For sure, yeah, okay, last one. We're all safer with tough-on-crime laws.
Speaker 2:Oh boy, yeah. Well, the way I think about this I have talked about it with my students is to say, reminding ourselves that 90 to 95% of the people who are locked up are coming back to the community. How do we want to treat them, interact with them while they're incarcerated? And there is lots of evidence that prisons do not make people less likely to commit crime. Only for people who do sexual, predator behavior and the most serious, you know, life-taking kinds of crimes. They are the least likely people to go back to prison. But it's almost as if prison is a schooling for future crime. So people inside are not safer, people outside are not safer.
Speaker 2:And, mike, there's one other thing I think people should know, should understand, about safety that last question we were talking about about women being safer inside. We were talking about women being safer inside. There's been a study actually done at Shakopee and a paper written about body cavity searches. So many things are attributed to the need for security, but women are subject to body cavity searches. If there's a female corrections officer available, she might be the person to perform it, but most corrections officers are men. So imagine a woman who has just given birth. She comes back to the prison without her baby and because she's been outside, she must have a body cavity search.
Speaker 1:That's so wrong.
Speaker 2:I think the right term for it would be state-sponsored sexual assault.
Speaker 1:You're not wrong.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of room for humanity, for our becoming more humane. And you know this is a personal opinion. I have never found punishment to be that effective in changing people's behavior. I'm much more of a person who offers encouragement and recognition, acknowledgement of people's pain. It just doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, it just doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, I agree. I mean, yes, there are situations where I think some people belong in prison, as you were saying. But I just it's funny. I was watching the news the other night and they were talking to and this is a completely different subject, but it kind of ties in a young Palestinian man in Gaza and both of his parents and two of his siblings were killed and his home was destroyed. He lost his job, he has nowhere else to go and for him Hamas looks like a really good option because they'll pay him money. And I realize it's an extreme example, but it's kind of the same thing, is it not? Where you know, once these people get out of prison, oftentimes and I don't male or female they have trouble finding jobs, they have trouble finding places to live, and it's so much easier just to go back to where they started from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do think that idea about options being limited, which is in your story about the young man from Gaza that is not what we think about when we determine punishment, either length or location. We do not think about why people commit crimes, so we do not go to the root of the issue. Commit crimes, so we do not go to the root of the issue. We are simply putting a band-aid temporarily on an oozing, gaping wound in someone's life, and we do it to masses of people. I just don't understand how people could argue that that makes our neighborhoods safer, don't?
Speaker 1:understand how people could argue that that makes our neighborhoods safer. Yeah, for sure. Okay, let's wrap up. Let's talk about resources for people that want to learn more about Ostara and the Prison Policy Initiative. Where can they go to look for?
Speaker 2:that website. It's ostarainitiativeorg. That website is filled with resources, so there are films, there are members of our staff giving short talks about various aspects of what happens for women who are incarcerated. There's also a victim impact statement given by one of the board members, and also lots of ways to participate in our work remotely, that is, by donating certain items that moms and their newborns need.
Speaker 1:So not just money, but it's actual.
Speaker 2:Yep, when moms are leaving, when their sentence is, minnesota has the Healthy Start Act which says if moms are leaving prison within a year they go to a community setting that's secure with their baby, and so we try to support that. And so rocking chairs and you know, cribs and all kinds of anyway. You can look at the website for that. The Prison Policy Initiative will give ideas, statistical information about incarceration in the nation. They have a wonderful search engine on the Prison Policy Initiative website so you can look up things about women. You can look up things about trans people who are incarcerated, which is probably another show.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:Lots and lots of ways to learn more, and we also love to come and give talks. You can have a doula come and give a talk to a classroom, a health class, for example, or a social studies class about women's incarceration. We do lots of public speaking and we love doing it.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. Oh, that's Colleen. Thank you so much. That's going to show up on my. I'll have to, okay, just like do that kind of clapping. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day. I know you're busy and I appreciate the time that you spent with us here. This is, there's a lot of information here to think about when we're talking about being kinder to other human beings, and I just appreciate everything you guys do.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mike. I want to add to your the title of your podcast. It says kindness matters and I would say kindness and humanity matter.
Speaker 1:I think they're tied hand in hand, but I won't discount your comment. I'll take that under advisement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:You're very, very welcome and you have a good week. I will you too. Bye now. I want to thank you for taking this time to listen to this episode with my guest, colleen Bell from the Ostera Initiative. I hope you're able to take something positive from the time you spent here today. Maybe you'll be inspired, maybe you'll be motivated, maybe you'll be moved. If you experienced any of those positive feelings, please consider sharing this podcast with your friends and family. I'm always striving to offer a better podcast, so give me some feedback. Let me know how you think I'm doing. Email me, leave a message on my socials. It would mean the world. Also. Feel free to follow us on our socials like Facebook, instagram, linkedin and TikTok.
Speaker 1:This podcast is part of the Mayday Media Network. If you have an idea for a podcast and need some production assistance, or have a podcast and are looking for a supportive network to join, check out maydaymedianetworkcom and check out the many different shows, like Afrocentric Spoil, my Movie Generation Mixtape In a Pickle Radio Show, wake Up and Dream with D Anthony Palin, stax O'Pax and the Time Pals. We will be back again next week with a brand new episode and we would be honored if you would join us. You've been listening to the Kindness Matters Podcast. I'm your host, mike Rathbun. Have a fantastic week.
