Acknowledgments xxi

A Note From a Hidden Healer: It’s Time for Change xxiii

Introduction 1

Just the Facts 11

Part One: Entering the System 23

Introduction to the Criminal Legal System for Women in the United States 25

Pathways to Prison: Understanding Trauma and Addiction 43

First Days 51

Part Two: Living Inside 61

Culture and Environment  63

Working Inside the Culture of Corrections 81

Finding Your Program 83

Food 97

Mothering from Inside 107

Grief and Loss 123

Developing Relationships 129

Medical and Mental Health Care 141

Aging in Custody 153

Celebrating Special Days 159

Remembering Those Who Don’t Survive 168

Part Three: The Journey Home 171

Gate Fever 173

The Work of Reentry 179

Healing after Incarceration 187

Part Four: What We Can Do 193

Envisioning Alternatives 195

Do One Small Thing 207

Further Learning  213

Organizations to Support 219

Sources 227

Author Biography 235

Book Group Discussion Questions 237

Also by the Author 239

"After working in the criminal legal system for over 25 years as a criminologist, I am grateful for the opportunity to continue to learn about things I claim to be an expert on. Hidden Healers is a very moving and personal account of Dr. Covington's journey with this system and the people behind its walls. She brings attention to the realities of daily life in prison and the research that supports the recommendations for change. She debunks the stereotypes with such clarity that you cannot pretend you don't get it! Incarcerated women become something more than subjects in these pages: they become people once more."
—DR. NENA MESSINA, Criminologist, UCLA (ret); President and CEO, Envisioning Justice Solutions, Inc., Simi Valley, California

"Hidden Healers is a brilliant and rattling study of women's journeys into imprisonment, their stories of abuse and pathways to crime (often born of psychological trauma), their unnecessary degradation and humiliation upon arrival in prison, and their ongoing pain from the daily grind of imprisonment. Yet it is also a story of women's survival and support for one another. Stephanie Covington captures the different ways women transform their lives against the odds and help to heal one another. The great strength of this book is that Covington tells it like it is. Compelling and incredibly moving."
—DR. LORRAINE GELSTHORPE, Professor, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, UK

With unflinching clarity, Hidden Healers cuts through the myths about incarcerated women to expose the all-too-real brutalities they face within a criminal legal system never designed for them. Backed by three decades' experience providing therapeutic programs inside prisons across the United States, trauma specialist Dr. Stephanie Covington has used her unique access to amplify the voices of the women themselves. Their stories illuminate realities most never see: that most women who get caught up in the criminal justice system have themselves been victims of harm, that the degradations of today's prisons and jails only magnify their trauma—and that incarcerated women regularly risk punishment to tend to one another's well-being in unexpected acts of kindness. Grounded in research and rich with personal narrative, Hidden Healers is a poignant and riveting look inside women's prisons and jails—and what we can do to help. Criminologists say this is a "must read".

"Hidden Healers is an important book because it reveals so much about the absurdity of calling our justice system for women, 'just.' It is not an easy book to read because Stephanie Covington, one of our country’s wise women, is merciless in her descriptions of what it is like for a woman to be sent to jail or prison. At the same time, the reader is accompanied on this journey by incarcerated women who are the 'hidden healers,' clearly demonstrating the time-honored caregiving that women provide for each other under adverse conditions. This book should be a mandatory part of the curriculum of every law school in the country. Every future prosecutor, or judge should know what they are expecting the woman who stands before them to endure, and every FUTURE defender should be aware of what is at stake."
—Sandra L. Bloom, M.D., Associate Professor, Health Management and Policy, Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

"Dr. Covington writes in an informed and impassioned voice about what she has learned and the women she has learned it from during 30 years working in prisons and jails. Hers is a voice of intelligence and compassion, pragmatism and hopefulness honed by the sharp edges of the reality of our prisons and jails. As important as her earlier work was, and the importance of the contributions they made, the voices of the women with whom she has worked and from whom she has learned makes this her most personal, and most important book. This is a 'must read' for everyone interested in prisons and jails today."
—Martin F. Horn, Secretary of Corrections, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (ret.), New York City Correction Commissioner (ret.)