By Judy Smestad-Nunn
Front page, February 25, 2009
"Going Home," a film about the lives of women in prison, served as a springboard for an eye-opening discussion at the Family Life Center of First United Methodist Church last Thursday night.
Redeem-Her, a non-profit organization that helps former inmates from the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, the only women's prison in New Jersey, sponsored the event.
The organization provides transitional housing where inmates can live upon their release from prison. Both houses are in Ocean County. The Toms River location just opened in November.
"The house operates as a collective, everyone pays a share, and they can stay as long as they're making progress," said Founder and Executive Director Stacey Kindt.
Kindt, a former elementary school teacher, served two and a half years of a seven-year sentence for a kidnapping conviction from a child custody dispute, and was released in 2004.
"We started the group in the prison in 2003. The perception from within the prison is people don't care about us, or we're mean, nasty folks. We want to change peoples' minds by doing events like this," she said. "Once we come out, we feel like we have to hide it. We want to bring humanity back into it...we're just women."
Another goal of Redeem-Her is to bring hope to women still incarcerated. The recidivism rate for recently released women in New Jersey is 67 percent within three years.
"That's not a statistic we want to stand by and accept," Kindt said.
Redeem-Her provides the nuts-and-bolts needs of the women by picking them up from the prison, providing clothes, food and transitional housing.
"Eighty percent of women are in jail because of addiction, so within the first 36 hours of being released, the woman makes decisions that affect whether she's going back to prison...They can't go back to the same people, place and things.
"Ninety percent of women who come to our homes come with nothing but the clothes on their back-sometimes just their prison uniform. They have no address, no phone number and no ID or job history for however long they were incarcerated. What are your prospects?" Kindt explained.
After the film, three formerly incarcerated women, all residents of the Toms River Redeem-Her home, shared their personal stories and answered questions from the audience.
Marcell, who is in her mid-40s, was a heroin addict for 25 years. She is from Ocean County, but found herself homeless in the streets of Newark.
"I was going to kill myself, and ended up in Ancora (psychiatric hospital) for 60 days. Then I went to prison...nothing makes sense in prison. All they teach you is how to sew. There aren't too many sewing jobs out there.
"There are no programs and no rehabilitation. The system is broke and we all know it. It costs $35,000 (of the taxpayer's money) a year to keep me in prison...There was a 12- to 18-month wait to get into a literacy group. They wanted to teach me to type and I couldn't even read! There was a six-month wait to get into Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous," Marcell said.
"We get them counseling for the things they went through, like addiction counseling they never had. Many women have medical and mental health needs. Where do you go to get $700 of medicine for a woman who came to us last week?" Kindt asked.
Several of the residents of the Redeem-Her house have recently taken their GED exams, hoping to increase their employment prospects.
"The job issue is the big thing," Kindt said. "Not everyone makes it," said Kindt, "But it's possible for anyone to be redeemed."
Redeem-Her runs a thrift store on 3rd Avenue in Neptune City called, "Second Chances" and receives no government funding.
