Like most people, I owe some apologies in this life. OK, I admit… a lot of apologies. But since there aren’t enough printed or even web pages in existence to list all the people who deserve a mea culpa, for the purposes of this writing, I’ll address one specific personal apology and one much, much larger one.
The personal apology I owe is to a public figure: Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan.
And the big apology that I’m making – and, frankly, I’m doing it on behalf of you, as well – is the astronomical amends that needs to be made to a large portion of incarcerated Arizona women.
That individual apology to Sheridan is for presuming that, because he served as former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s chief deputy, he’d be just another Joe. He’s not, and I’m going to explain why.
Both of these apologies center around a study conducted inside one of MCSO’s jails – a study that’s turning the classic “But I’m innocent!” claim of the incarcerated on its head in horrible ways. While it’s likely that a few women proclaiming innocence from behind bars are actually innocent – i.e. they didn’t commit the crime for which they were convicted – groundbreaking research in Arizona shows that a loss of innocence might be the bigger issue. Plainly stated, a staggering percentage of them were victimized as children and young women.
For the survey, Arizona State University’s Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research polled about half of the women in Maricopa County’s Estrella Jail. Led by professor Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, the survey showed that 80 percent of inmates reported being a victim of domestic violence; 62 percent said they’d been sexually assaulted; and 50.9 percent said they had been sex trafficked.
Of the last cohort, nearly 20 percent reported being trafficked as a child. MCSO detention official Brandon Smith, a co-author of the study, told me on KTAR that the childhood statistic was the most heartbreaking for him personally – overall, more than half of respondents reported being abused as minors.
In essence, many of these women were serving a cruel and unusual sentence long before they actually got to jail. I don’t know if I can think of anything sadder than little girls growing up – and growing into adults – in a life so wretched they might actually prefer the one “inside.”
There are more sad stats than I can list, but here’s one I need to underline: Nearly 75 percent of the inmates reported having children of their own, with the large majority of those sons and daughters being under 18 years old.
The study was launched under former Sheriff Paul Penzone, and here’s where my prejudged opinion of Sheriff Sheridan is evolving: The “Little Joe” version of him in my mind would’ve said, “Shut it down!” and put green bologna back on the menu and pink underwear on the women, like his former boss did.
Instead, Sheridan’s MCSO is acting positively on the data, designing in-prison services to help these women deal with their trauma. Hopefully, this will reduce recidivism – which will help them salvage their lives and, not unimportantly, save taxpayer money.
With this subtle, overdue apology to these traumatized women, we might even be saving a little piece of society’s soul.
