Singing prison's praises

Stacy Davis had hit rock bottom.

It was 2005, and Davis had just been sentenced to seven years in prison for trafficking amphetamines. She was no stranger to jail and to prisons, including the women's prison in Lowell, and she knew what they were like.

"Lowell is a nightmare," said Davis, now 36. "The main unit is a nightmare. It's filthy and nasty. The other prisons treat you like a dog."

Then she caught a break. She was sent to Hillsborough Correctional Institution, a 35-year-old prison that only a year earlier had become a Faith- and Character-Based Institution, the only one in the state for women.

The faith-based initiative captured the hearts of volunteers. They adopted the facility and flooded into the prison from nearby communities to offer their services.

The initiative is designed to reduce recidivism through a mentorship program that focuses on personal growth and character development. For Davis, it worked.

"I'm devastated that it's closing," Davis said of HCI. "At Hillsborough, if you treat them with respect, they treat you with respect. Not only is the staff held to higher standard, but the inmates are held to a higher standard, too."

She said female inmates across the state know about Hillsborough Correctional and the opportunities there.

"Everybody tries to sign up," she said. "I heard about it in the county jail even before I was sentenced." She said she signed up to go there, prayed a lot and was sent there after a year at Lowell.

"I just think it is an absolute crime that this prison is going to be closed," she said.

Davis was released in 2010 and now has a telemarketing job in Pinellas County. She says the help she received at Hillsborough Correctional Institution means she won't be going back to a life of crime.

"The thing is, I am working and I am successfully completing probation," she said. "I'm not getting into any trouble. Not even a hint of it."

Betty Westberry served 29 years of a life sentence for first-degree murder in Clewiston and was released in 2009. The last year was spent at Hillsborough Correctional.

The 58-year-old parolee is attending classes at Miami-Dade College and will graduate in June with an associate degree in information technology.

She spent time in just about every prison in the state before her turn at Hillsborough, she said.

"Other prisons are just warehouses. That's it," she said. "They border on verbally abusive. They just don't care — just do their job and punish you a little bit along the way."

The volunteers at Hillsborough Correctional were what made the difference, Westberry said.

"They always had a positive attitude," she said. "They believed in people, and it was good to know everybody wasn't bitter and angry, that there were good people out there, people who would help me and wanted to help me."

One of those people was Barbara Gingrich of Sun City Center, who has volunteered at the prison for years. "I guess budget cuts talk," she said. "But we do good work. I think it is very sad that we only look at the money and not the consequences of our actions."

She said the Faith- and Character-Based Correctional Initiative is changing the lives of prisoners.

"They are being rehabilitated," she said. "And the state is taking that away from them by putting them into warehouses where there are no betterment programs. This will be harmful to them.

"The prisoners there are on a good path," she said. "They come out of there and live good lives. It's so sad that it's closing."

She said the programs offered by staff and volunteers include computer training, culinary arts and woodworking classes. There also is a story-time class where inmates record stories on compact discs and send them to their children.

There are classes in which prisoners sew items such as aprons for schoolchildren, quilts for veterans at the James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital and tote bags for abused women in shelters.

The program works, if you gauge success by a low recidivism rate. Prison chaplain Rex Henry said last year that from 2004, when the faith-based program began, through 2011, of the 1,475 inmates released from HCI, only 99 returned to prison as repeat offenders.

Hillsborough Correctional is one of four Faith- and Character-Based Initiative institutions in Florida, though the only one for women. The prison opened in 1976 and over the years also has housed underage offenders and men.

The Florida Department of Corrections' decision to close seven prisons was prompted by a decline in prisoners, a trend that began in 2007. The state has about 12,000 empty prison beds.

HCI will close on March 1.

Nancy Williams, a prison volunteer group leader, said the state did not consider the rate of recidivism in deciding how to cut costs. The overall rate of repeat offenders returning to prison is 33 percent, according to state statistics. For women, it's 21 percent.

At Hillsborough Correctional, the rate is below 10 percent, prison advocates say.

But that can be a misleading indication of how rehabilitation programs work, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Ann Howard said, because inmates often are moved from prison to prison during their incarceration.

The state has criticized Hillsborough Correctional for having a high cost per inmate, high maintenance costs and low inmate population. The capacity was increased last year, and no inmates were transferred in.

The criteria used in ranking prisons did not include recidivism rates, which Williams said is a major mistake.

"I would think the goal of the government is to decrease the number of repeat offenders," she said. "Yet they are closing the most successful facility in the state of Florida, which should be used as a model for the nation, not just the state."

She said the key is giving inmates a sense of self-worth.

"Two hundred out of 300 inmates there have one-on-one mentors," Williams said. "Think what that means to those ladies to have someone interested in their lives and sit with them every week."

Hillsborough Correctional is unique, she said, because it is close to communities such as Sun City Center with an abundance of retirees willing to donate time and money. She said there are 400 volunteers at the prison who take part in the programs.

"The community here has taken ahold of this place," Williams said. "And that gives inmates a sense of self-esteem and dignity that people are willing to come out there. Where else can you change lives of people who are looking for another chance?"