Female inmate program challenged
BILLINGS – A federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union accuses the Montana Department of Corrections of forcing women prisoners to participate in a degrading treatment program not required of male inmates – including mandatory singing and rounds of children’s games like “Duck Duck Goose.”
The advocacy group’s complaint was filed earlier this month on behalf of seven female prisoners. It targets the five-year-old “Right Living Community” program at the Montana Women’s Prison in Billings.
The suit claims female inmates receive little training from the program and instead are forced to participate in children’s games and sing children’s songs, with those who refuse put into solitary confinement. And unlike male inmates who participate in boot camp at the men’s prison in Deer Lodge, women in the Right Living treatment program do not have a chance for sentence reductions at the end of the program.
“What it really boils down to is female prisoners at the Women’s Prison are going to be forced to do things males aren’t forced to do,” ACLU attorney Anna Conley said. “All you have to do to see the inequity of this is to imagine male prisoners doing Simon Says or going to lock up.”
Conley said the program also establishes a prison hierarchy in which high-ranking inmates can take away privileges of fellow inmates who rank lower.
Department of Corrections spokesman Bob Anez said his agency would not have a public response to the complaint but would address the allegations in court.
The department’s biennial report described the program that sparked the lawsuit as a “therapeutic community” model initiated in all housing units at the women’s prison in 2007.
“A therapeutic community is a drug-free environment in which people with addictions and criminal or antisocial behavior live together in an organized and structured way that promotes change and provides skills to develop a drug-free and crime free life in society,” the report stated.
The program also features “self-help groups” within each of the prison’s housing units.
The ACLU lawsuit stems from a complaint filed in federal court last year by one of the suit’s plaintiffs, inmate Susan Fish, who initially represented herself in the case.
Department of Corrections attorneys said in a June answer to Fish’s complaint that the Right Living program was “substantially equivalent” to programs for adult male offenders. They wrote that the women’s prison program provides counseling and builds decision-making skills to prepare inmates for re-entry into the community.
The Department of Corrections earlier this year sought to have Fish’s case dismissed on the grounds that she had not followed proper legal procedures, but the move was denied by U.S. Magistrate Judge Carolyn Ostby.