By Carissa Wolf
Boise Weekly
"The game" plays out like a ping pong of charges bouncing from one inmate to another.
The women sit facing each other in a circle, and in polite attack, the accusations begin.
"I'm pulling you up for breaking a verbal commitment," one inmate said.
"If it seems little to you, it might be big to others. ... A slip-up could be a sign of relapse," another chimes in.
"I agree, it's a serious matter," one added.
The charges flew as the accused sat in silence. Then the group fell quiet and the condemned spoke:
"Thanks, I'll get on top of that," she said.
The charges, the allegations, the words of blame are spoken daily and, for the most part, remain private matters, kept within the walls of the community, unheard by the world that lives beyond the rolling sage-covered hills that buffer the accused and the accusers from freedom.
The community resides beside a vacant stretch of road that connects a vast desert landscape to the barbed-wire-encased Idaho Maximum Security Prison south of Boise. In the shadows of guard towers and an imposing fence sits a more diminutive building. Out of context, it could pass for a modern church or school. Women mill about the grounds, doing yard work, carrying out chores, passing in and out of the building's doors unbridled by security gates, fences and the fixtures of imprisonment. Sans the drab beige uniforms, the women could pass as cooperative members of a collective--a commune perhaps, or given their quiet rhythm of work and study, a religious community.
Communal living, cooperation, communication and contemplation define this community. Although housed as a part of the Idaho Department of Correction prison complex, the facility is set apart physically from the high-security facility it neighbors and philosophically from conventional institutions of reform. They don't call its surrounding walls a cellblock. They don't even call it a prison. Gone is the vernacular of crime and punishment, and the trappings of imprisonment remain purposefully absent.
This isn't a prison, it's a therapeutic community. This isn't a prison population, it is a "family." And these are not prisoners, they are "sisters."
Prison officials say therapeutic communities have become the preferred way to reform some inmates suffering from co-existing addictions, mental illness and criminal behaviors. They say the programs that aim to re-socialize inmates through cognitive therapy and peer accountability reduce recidivism rates and transform deviant personalities into functional, productive citizens.
But some former sisters say the program does more harm than good. A lawsuit filed against IDOC by a former inmate alleges the program denies prisoners their constitutional rights and subjects participants to false allegations and unwarranted punishment.
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