Mary Reddick stands in front of a bookcase in Oklahoma’s Dr. E.W. Warrior Correctional Center and contemplates what her life could be like. She is an inmate at the facility. But she is also a trained educator in Oklahoma’s HIV Peer Education Program for Incarcerated People. And that, she claims, has made all the difference. “If it were not for the HIV group here,” she says, “I don’t think I would have the self-esteem I have in me today to go forward…If I just sat here and did my time, I would have learned nothing and gone out the same way.”
“Going out the same way” is exactly what Dr. Melanie Spector wanted to prevent when she helped found the program in Oklahoma’s prisons in 1995. With the U.S. Department of Justice estimating that 25% of the nation’s HIV positive population passes through corrections facilities each year, Spector recognized the need to introduce education to offenders to combat their ignorance of HIV – and to help prevent its spread.
She took a unique approach, however. Instead of bringing in academic experts, she worked to design a program that empowers inmates to teach each other. In the program, Oklahoma’s Department of Corrections, State Health Department, and community-based groups collaborate to recruit prisoners and then train them with classes accredited by Tulsa Community College and Oklahoma State University. Once they develop their own understanding, the prisoners then teach their peers about risky behaviors.
The program began in women’s facilities, but it has expanded to include men’s facilities, as well, and operates in nine Oklahoma prisons. The American Public Health Association Journal reports that more than 2000 female prisoners and 100 male prisoners have been trained to teach. Prisons that have the program have experienced a two-thirds drop in HIV infection rates, and educators that have been released into the community have noticeably low rates of recidivism. Statistics compiled by Oklahoma State University on the program’s influence on women who have taken the peer-taught classes reveals a 25% increase in their knowledge of HIV prevention. The program won the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Program Award in 2002 and has also received recognition from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
For more information on inmate health, visit Justice Fellowship’s Inmate Health issue page.
To learn more about Oklahoma’s HIV Peer Education Program, look at:
HIV, Incarceration and Community: A Paramount Linkage
By Melanie Spector, Corrections Today - 2007
Educating the Incarcerated Female: An Holistic Approach
Dr. H. C. Davis, Supervisor of Education, Eddie Warrior Correctional Center
Empowering the Yard
A documentary from the National AIDS Foundation |
