Name: What Beauty Is Like Behind Prison Bars | Shady | Refinery29
Uploaded: 2018-06-12T09:05:27.000Z
Duration: 15 min 41 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of women are facing a new reality.

If a girl is performing sexual favors, he would bring her in colored pencils, lip gloss.

Where they are forced to navigate worlds of sexual bartering, manipulation, and abuse

They'll definitely use your needs against you.

They will break you down any way they can.

Over the last few decades, women have been making gains in representation in almost every

Yet there's one part of society where the number of women has exploded and they're

Since the 1980's, the number of incarcerated women has skyrocketed by 700%.

Women have become the fastest growing population entering the criminal justice system.

It's a $173 billion dollar industry, making it bigger than Target, Uber, and Netflix.

Just outside of Portland, Oregon, Coffee Creek Correctional Facility has found a unique way

providing beauty behind bars through its cosmetology program.

I knew that beauty had the power to transform, but could it really change how women do time?

We went to see who these women were, and what they had to say.

The cosmetology program here started in 2002, when Coffee Creek saw a need for female focus

programming, and decided to do something about it.

The program has become so popular that it recently doubled in size.

Fellow inmates make up most of the clients who come in for services provided by the students.

Everything from hair and makeup, to gels, and even eyelash extensions.

I think it looks really good, you did a very good job

The program itself is highly competitive to get into.

To even be considered, inmates must have a track record of good behavior and a desire to change.

If there's anything I'm good at, it will be makeup.

Its certainly true for 34-year-old Candice Altman, a repeat offender at Coffee Creek

Some of us made more than one bad decision, but a majority of us are just here feeling

We want to get out and be good moms, and have careers, and to be reintegrated.

The majority of women coming into prison are like Candice, in for a non-violent

offense and the primary caretaker of a child under 18.

It doesn't look like much now, but it's gonna be nice when it's done.

They're also predominantly women of color.

This is my third time in prison and so, at every other time it's just been hopeless,

For the first time I feel like I just have this goal.

This just– something, some kind of purpose.

Why is beauty especially important for women who are in prison?

We all wear men's jeans and these terribly fitting blue t-shirts.

So I think you taking care of yourself and doing your makeup and fixing your hair,

it just helps your whole attitude about being here.

Someone might say that women in prison don't necessarily deserve access to beauty products.

Maybe it's not a matter of deserving these things.

It's a matter of rehabilitating people and giving them hope, and keeping them from continuing

We have a lot of women that are here that we find have co-occurring disorders, so both

mental health issues, and alcohol and drug treatment needs, and they find themselves

on this path that they don't really have a lot of control in.

Christine views the success of the cosmetology program as proof that an approach tailored

These women, a number of them, repeat bad relationships, and the notion of their own

sense of worth and value is not something they have a great grasp on.

Certainly, the programs help the practice.

And supporting them in that manner is crucial.

Many of the women here at Coffee Creek and across the country come into prison with a

history of mental health issues, domestic violence, and sexual abuse that makes their

rehabilitation that much more complicated.

Programs like this not only provide women with an access point to beauty and self care,

but help to bridge the gap of mental health, drug, and social services that are underfunded.

Despite the fact that for every taxpayer dollar spent on services, up to five more are saved in recidivism.

Coffee Creek gave me a glimpse into what a prison at the forefront of responding to the

But I wanted to know, how are other prisons across the country responding?

I went to visit another program in another prison with a very different environment.

Lowell Correctional Facility is one of the largest women's prisons in the country.

The officers are underpaid and stretched thin, often at the expense of the inmates.

But there's a bright spot: the cosmetology program.

As soon as I walked in I met Kerry, who after serving almost three years for multiple charges,

was coming in for a haircut before being released the next day.

Why was it important for you to come in today before you get out tomorrow?

I mean, it just means everything to have your hair done, and walk out and feel good about

When those little things are taken away you don't realize how important they are until you don't have them.

It makes sense, for many women, including myself.

Beauty has been ingrained in us by society as an integral part of how we understand who we are.

And in prison, where so much is stripped away from you, makeup becomes a lifeline to hold onto.

It was clear that this program was doing a lot for these women.

But even in this little sanctuary, they couldn't entirely escape what was allegedly going on beyond these walls.

It's what you have to live with, since you are in prison.

The problem is the whole structure of the prison is set up in a way that sort of invites abuse.

When guards have so much power, and inmates are so powerless, it's just a corrupting situation really.

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What Beauty Is Like Behind Prison Bars | Shady | Refinery29

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