Rosa Lee Case Study

Brenda Combs is a strong, determined women who has experienced the roughest parts of life and who has made a positive impact on people around her. When Combs developed a partying habit, she also got into the dangerous habit of taking drugs. Combs eventually became a cocaine addicted who would fall in and out of bad relationships. Then, one day when she got her shoes stolen from her, Combs decided to turn her life around and gain her dignity back. The first challenge she faced while changing her life around was to try and stay strong in rehab as it was “the hardest she had ever known” (paragraph 18). Combs determination eventually led her to a bachelor’s degree from the University of Phoenix and a job at the StarShine charter school.

The number of women incarcerated is growing at a rapid pace. This calls for a reevaluation of our correction institutions to deal with women’s involvement in crime. Increasing numbers of arrests for property crime and public order offenses are outpacing that of men. The “War on Drugs” has a big influence on why our prisons have become overcrowded in the last 25 years. Women are impacted more than ever because they are being convicted equally for drug and other offenses. Female criminal behavior has always been identified as minor compared to Male’s criminal behavior. Over the years women have made up only small part of the offender populations. There is still only a small

Purpose Statement: to reveal the problem of mass incarceration of poor, black male, and increasingly female, young people in the name of a bogus war on drugs from the 1980 's?90 's.

States have choices in the means by which to promote community well-being, protect public safety and curb the drug trade. Over the last two decades, the choice was imprisonment. Prison is, of course, a legitimate criminal sanction, but it should be used as a last resort – i.e. used only for serious crimes -- and the length of the sentence should be commensurate with the conduct and culpability of the offender. Unfortunately, too many states have opted instead for sentencing policies that mandate long sentences even for nonviolent, low-level drug offenders. In her article, Patrice Gaines, the author of Laughing in the Dark: from Colored girl to woman of a color-A journey from prison to power, argues that it is necessary to provide restorative

Since the mid 80’s, the number of women incarcerated has tripled.The majority of women incarcerated are unskilled, impoverished and disproportionately women of color. As a result, African American children are nine times more likely to have a parent in prison than a White child.

In the past thirty years, the incarceration of women has risen exponentially. Poverty, lack of access to education, abuse, addiction, mental health and parenting issues all impact women’s criminality and health before, during and after they are incarcerated (Hannaher, K., 2007). By 2010 there were nearly 206,000 women currently serving time in the criminal justice system. As the years go by, the numbers are constantly increasing (Women Behind Bars, 2015). The number of pregnant women incarcerated has also been on the rise. Most incarcerated women do not receive proper prenatal care before entering the criminal justice system. Because these women are from mostly poverty neighborhoods, they are more likely to endure domestic violence, poor

Rosa Lee Cunningham is a 52 year old African-American single mother of eight, who is a long time heroin addict, and has an extensive criminal record. Of her eight children six of them have followed her in her life of addiction and crime. These crimes include everything from petty theft, to prostitution, to drug trafficking. Rosa Lee has recently showed up at the Howard University Hospital emergency room because her body is trying to shut down due to her heroin addiction, and she has Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The staff in

Over the last half-century, the United States has turned more and more frequently to the use of incarceration as a form of punishment. Sentencing policies and stricter laws requiring mandatory minimums for certain offenses, no matter the conditions of the offense, have boosted the incarceration rate in this country to staggering heights. The typical issues that affect America’s prison systems are reflected in Jennifer Gonnerman’s book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett. Elaine Bartlett’s life, along with the lives of surrounding family and friends, is forever changed by her 16 years of incarceration. Elaine Bartlett is only one of many Americans that have been wronged by the cruel and unusual punishments implemented by a society claiming to have a fair, balanced, and equal justice system. A fair and balanced justice system that convicts people who carries the right amount of drugs in weight to have a mandatory incarceration for a minimum of 15 years to life, yet those who commit murder or rape may receive a lesser sentence. There is also the issue of transitioning back into society after being incarcerated for so many years. Incarceration does not just punish the offender; the offender’s family and friends are also negatively affected by the conviction and imprisonment of a loved one. Children could be put in the system or need to be raised by other members in the family. This could lead the children to deviate down the same path as their parent who

The women, who have all been sentenced to less than a year at Riker’s, attended biweekly lessons about parental discipline, communication skills and how to be positive role models in their children's lives. This was the first time the Osborne Association-run program, called FamilyWorks, has been open to female inmates at Riker’s. It's funded by the city Correction Department, the City Council and the federal government. For some, the voluntary course is an important step toward regaining custody of their children upon release from jail. For others, it's a chance to understand the impact their incarceration has had on their children.

Lee, Barbara was born July 19, 1946 in Texas, Lee moved to California in 1960 due to her parents being in the military. Lee attended a catholic school Sisters of Loretto taught her which was dedicated to justice and peace. In high school lee worked with NAACP to integrate her high school to have a mix of races in her cheer team. Lee attend mills college while she was a single mother and receiving public assistance. She became president of Mills College’s Black Student Union while she was president Shirley Chisholm who happened to be the first African American woman elected to Congress was picked to speak at her school. After meeting Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm Lee signed up to vote for her first time and worked on Congresswoman Chisholm’s presidential campaign.

Assessing the consequences of our country’s soaring imprison rates has less to do with the question of guilt versus innocence than it does with the question of who among us truly deserves to go to prison and face the restrictive and sometimes brutally repressive conditions found there. We are adding more than one thousand prisoners to our prison and jail systems every single week. The number of women in prisons and jails has reached a sad new milestone. As women become entangled with the war on drugs, the number in prison has increased if not double the rate of incarceration for men. The impact of their incarceration devastates thousands of children, who lose their primary caregiver when Mom goes to prison.

Identifying Information: Rosa Lee is a feisty African American female who grew up poor on the fringes of a Capitol Hill neighborhood. Her parents were sharecroppers who had migrated to the city. Rosa Lee had eight children, six boys and two girls, over an 11 year stretch; she was 14 years old when she had her first born. While pregnant with her first child, Rosa Lee dropped out of school without having learned to read. At age 16, Rosa Lee got married; the marriage only lasted a few months. She supported her family by waitressing in

Relevant history; Rosalinda Brewer is a thirty-year-old women had been pulling out her hair for nearly fifteen years. She isn’t sure how it started or why she pulls her hair but it’s become a bad habit. Rosalinda’s presenting problem is hair pulling. Her diagnosis seems to be an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) specifically trichotillomania which is the urge to pull one’s own hair from anywhere on the body including the scalp. Rosalinda’s symptoms are feeling relief of tension after pulling her own hair which causing her to have bald spots. Treatments that could help Rosalinda with her hair pulling disorder are habit reversal training and serotonin reuptake inhibitor medication. The habit reversal training would help Rosalinda be more aware

First of all, we must take into consideration that this book was published in 1999 and no forever or preface has been added with a different date in this edition. My estimate would be that in the 20 years since; things have gone from bad to worse. However, future research on my part will hopefully shed dome information. I specifically plan to check the recently published "Becoming Miss Burton" whose author went through more than one period of incarceration. The first due to substance abuse after her son was shot by a policeman and the second after being released with no institutional help and basically without an identity. Ms. Burton is an African-American woman who resided in L.A. She is now trying to help others in similar circumstances.

Girls in Trouble With The Law is an insightful and informative book that describes in detail the experiences of some of the young caught in the system. Schaffner obtains her data through conducting a multiyear qualitative study with both court involved girls and as well as the adults involved in their lives, during the late 1990’s (p 3). Her research was based in the United States, more specifically in the Los Angeles Detention facility (p 4). The author does a great job at linking the stories of the young ladies to social problems within our society, such as poverty, racism, child abuse, substance abuse, and so forth. In addition, she incorporates relative facts,