Earlier this year, researchers from ASU released a report about incarcerated women at Estrella jail — a women’s-only facility in Maricopa County. Now those same researchers released a new report about the women at Perryville Prison in Goodyear.
Dominique Roe-Sepowitz is a professor at Arizona State University and the director of the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research there.
"So, the Perryville study was, first of all, groundbreaking that the Department of Corrections allowed a researcher in," she said.
The team surveyed roughly half of Perryville’s population. Roe-Sepowitz said they learned that many had an 11th grade education level, much higher than the assumed 5th grade level.
"Just that alone, that we can go into more complex material, that there's the ability for more complex thinking, is just a very simple lesson that we learned that was pretty incredible," Roe-Sepowitz said.
They also learned that more than half of those surveyed had been kicked out of their childhood home, and more than 83% reported being in a relationship with domestic violence as an adult.
Roe-Sepowitz said the goal is to create more tools to help women prepare for life after prison.
