A first of its kind collaborative is looking to provide learning opportunities for women who are incarcerated at Estrella Jail, Maricopa County’s only all-female jail.
Dominique Roe-Sepowitz is leading one of the first gatherings of the Becoming Collaborative.
“It's a group of really smart, really thoughtful people who want to work with incarcerated women for the best reasons to make them feel heard and seen, to make them feel connected to the community that they're going to return to.”
Roe-Sepowitz is a professor in the School of Social Work at ASU and the director of the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research. The collaborative was born from her work at Estrella Jail, which found that the women had experienced high rates child abuse, relationship violence, high rates of adverse childhood experiences, unsheltered experiences, substance use and mental health disorders.
“I don't know of any other program like this in the country. When we think about incarceration programming, we think of it as the responsibility of the jail or the prison,” she said.
“In this model, it is the community's responsibility. It is our responsibility as social service providers," she explains. "So when they are released, they're connected to us, they're connected to programs. Their children can be connected to us in our programs."
Until now, there haven't been many programs or classes at the jail on topics like domestic violence, parenting or financial planning. In part because the average length of stay is nine days.
Valentina Restrepo Montoya leads Arizona Legal Women and Youth Services, or ALWAYS. Her organization will offer a course called Repairing the Future.
“And we walk through different options in criminal history repair. We call them the different doors that you might be able to open.”
Like filing a petition to seal or clear arrest or conviction records. The groups will head to Estrella this week.
