Murals found useful in rehabilitation

Fayetteville facility houses 100 women convicted of nonviolent crimes

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/RYAN MCGEENEY --10-21-2011-- 
Kayla Wilks, an inmate at the Community Corrections Center in Fayetteville, continues work on a mural painting of the Peace Ball art installation located outside the Fayetteville Town Center on Oct. 21. Inmates at the facility are encouraged to recreate various scenes from around Arkansas on interior walls throughout the facility.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/RYAN MCGEENEY --10-21-2011-- Kayla Wilks, an inmate at the Community Corrections Center in Fayetteville, continues work on a mural painting of the Peace Ball art installation located outside the Fayetteville Town Center on Oct. 21. Inmates at the facility are encouraged to recreate various scenes from around Arkansas on interior walls throughout the facility.

— Hidden in the mural that adorns many of the walls of the Northwest Arkansas Community Correction Center are details that offer a glimpse of the life of its residents.

“This is a place for healing,” said center Supervisor Maggie Capel on a tour of the facility last week.

The center was planned as a 170-bed unit for women convicted of nonviolent andnonsexual crimes, but budget constraints capped occupancy at 100 in the center, which was converted in 2008 from the old Washington County jail for about $700,000.

Capel said the first inmates to arrive in April 2008 began working on the mural, which varies in theme in different parts of the center. Inmates painted the hallway nearest College Avenue to look like downtown Fayetteville in the 1950s, she said, while another hallway features separatepaintings to mimic an art museum.

The murals are intended to soften the atmosphere of the center and reflect its mission: to alter criminal behavior through therapy. That differs from prison, where therapy is optional, Capel said.

Residents of the center can’t just wait until their sentence is up; they must show personal growth, she said.

“Our mission wasn’t to keep them here ‘til the magic number came up. We needthem to heal,” Capel said.

The center is the newest of five residential facilities run by the Arkansas Department of Community Correction and is operated as a therapeutic community, which means residents learn to take responsibility for each other, Capel said. Unlike in prison, where responsibility to enforce rules rests with the guards, the center’s residents help keep each other on track, she said.

FOLLOWS AA TENETS

There are three phases to the program, which follows many of the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous, Capel said. The first phase is orientation, during which residents are told what is expected of them and begin addiction education, she said.

The second phase requires residents to focus on the behavior that brought them to the center and includes writing an autobiography, Capel said.

The third phase focuses on preparing residents for release and includes writing a resume and learning jobsearch skills.

The center is open to women convicted of nonviolent and nonsexual offenses who are remanded to the custody of the Department of Community Correction in one of two ways, said Gary Tabor, assistant supervisor. Judges can transfer women sentenced to prison to the center, he said. Also, women can be sentenced to probation, plus a stay in the center, he said.

Many of the inmates were convicted of drug offenses and most have some sort of addiction, Capel said.

Inmates split their time between structured therapy and work assignments, which include working in the kitchen or on the mural crew, she said. In addition to the daily therapy sessions, religious and nonprofit groups provide services and additional therapy sessions after dinner, she said.

The therapeutic community concept appears to work for many people who enter community correction, which has a lower recidivism rate than the state Department of Correction, she said.

A recidivism report published last year by the Department of Community Correction found that its residential centers like the one in Fayetteville had a 26 percent rate of return, said RhondaSharp, spokesman for the department.

The 2010 report found that the Department of Correction had a recidivism rate of 73 percent, Sharp said. That report covers 2005-07, so it doesn’t include the Fayetteville center, but the lowest recidivism rate was recorded at the other women’s center in Pine Bluff.

The Southeast Arkansas Community Correction Center, which houses more than 300 women, had a 19.3 percent recidivism rate, according to the report.

“It’s not utopia. There will always be people who need to be in prison, but we’re offering an opportunity for people who want to try to make it in this world,” Sharp said.

Recidivism rates are determined by looking at the number of inmates who return to custody in a three-year period, Sharp said.

ONLY 15% RECIDIVISM

The Fayetteville center has been open just long enough to gauge the recidivism rate, which is about 15 percent for 2008-11, Capel said.

Capel said that while she’s proud she can boast an 85 percent success rate, the credit lies with dedicated employees such as Karla Kelley, who teaches the women to paint.

Kelley, who also serves as Tabor’s assistant, said she went to school to learn commercial art but never had the opportunity to pursue it as a career. She jumped at the opportunity to work on the mural, she said.

The first sight upon entering the hall from the lobby is the painting of a grocery store with the address of 682, which refers to the act that authorizes early release for inmates who complete the program, explained Tabor.

Down the hall from the grocery is a painted boutique called “Pink Cadillacs,” which is slang for eyeglasses. Prisons used to issue prisoners who needed glasses large round pink frames, Capel said.

The boutique also has wristwatches on display, with the painted-on watches all set to 11:10 a.m., which is lunch time, she said.

For many of the women, the closest thing to an artistic experience was doodling in high school, Kelley said. It’s inspiring to watch them transition from fear of making a mistake to pride in their finished product, she said.

“I’ve just kind of fallen into my heart’s work,” Kelley said.

Sharp said the other four centers in the state feature murals, but not as extensive as the one in the Fayetteville center. The men’s units tend to feature affirmations commonly used in Alcoholics Anonymous painted on the walls, she said.

There are some murals at the Southeast Arkansas Community Correction Center in Pine Bluff, Sharp said, but its main program is quilting integrated into therapy.

Some of the handmade quilts are donated to the Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, while others are entered in fairs, Sharp said. Some of the women get good enough at making quilts to make it their livelihood when they’re released, she said.

“We’re giving them an opportunity to change their life and when they change their life, it changes the life of their children or their spouse,” Sharp said.

To contact this reporter:

[email protected]

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 10/28/2011

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