{"id":199702,"date":"2024-06-21T12:59:12","date_gmt":"2024-06-21T22:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=199702"},"modified":"2024-06-21T12:59:12","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T22:59:12","slug":"liberty-who-are-we-newsletter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2024\/06\/21\/liberty-who-are-we-newsletter\/","title":{"rendered":"Newsletter spotlights creative works of incarcerated women"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><figure id=\"attachment_199705\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-199705\" style=\"width: 676px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/manoa-sociology-liberty-newsletter.jpg\" alt=\"book cover called Liberty\" width=\"676\" height=\"381\" class=\"size-full wp-image-199705\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/manoa-sociology-liberty-newsletter.jpg 676w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/manoa-sociology-liberty-newsletter-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/manoa-sociology-liberty-newsletter-130x73.jpg 130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 676px) 100vw, 676px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-199705\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Liberty: Who Are We?<\/em> newsletter cover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Colleen Rost-Banik has a theory about incarcerated women: They lead complex lives. The full-time <a href=\"https:\/\/sociology.manoa.hawaii.edu\/\">sociology<\/a> instructor in the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai&#699;i<\/span> at M\u0101noa <a href=\"https:\/\/socialsciences.manoa.hawaii.edu\/\">College of Social Sciences<\/a> said these individuals&#8212;prior to entering the criminal justice system&#8212;have experienced abuse or trauma. Also, many have been incarcerated for crimes resulting from core social problems such as poverty, addiction and mental illness.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_199704\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-199704\" style=\"width: 214px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/manoa-sociology-colleen-rost-banik-214x300.jpg\" alt=\"person headshot\" width=\"214\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-199704\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/manoa-sociology-colleen-rost-banik-214x300.jpg 214w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/manoa-sociology-colleen-rost-banik-93x130.jpg 93w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/manoa-sociology-colleen-rost-banik.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 214px) 100vw, 214px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-199704\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Colleen Rost-Banik<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&ldquo;When it comes to crime, our society has been really slow to put what we know about human behavior and social issues into practice,&rdquo; said Rost-Banik, who joined <abbr title=\"东精影业\">东精影业<\/abbr> M\u0101noa in 2023 after teaching at <a href=\"https:\/\/windward.hawaii.edu\/\">Windward Community College<\/a>. &ldquo;How do we expect people pushed out of formal schooling, who aren\u2019t able to find living wage jobs with healthcare benefits, and who are responsible for taking care of their children, to shoulder their stress without turning to substances or illicit work?<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Rather than addressing the root problems of society that lead to crime, our society has implemented heightened policing and harsher sentencing. This significantly increases incarceration nationwide as well as in <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai&#699;i<\/span>, with Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders disproportionately represented in our jails and prisons.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>This sociological imbalance was a prime motivating factor behind the April 2024 newsletter <a href=\"http:\/\/tiny.cc\/a9tkxz\"><em>Liberty: Who Are We?<\/em><\/a> It is filled with poetry, art, quotes, testimonies and general creativity produced by about 11 residents at the Women\u2019s Community Correctional Center (<abbr>WCCC<\/abbr>) in Kailua. <abbr>WCCC<\/abbr> is the only women\u2019s prison on <span aria-label=\"Oahu\">O&#699;ahu<\/span>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/tiny.cc\/a9tkxz\">See the newsletter<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Student collaboration<\/h2>\n<p>While the contributors were the newsletter\u2019s authors and artists, the publication\u2019s editors or assemblers were Rost-Banik\u2019s spring 2024 students in the Women and Crime class, cross-listed as <abbr>SOC\/WGSS<\/abbr> (<a href=\"https:\/\/wgss.manoa.hawaii.edu\/\">Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies<\/a>) 435. About a third of the class, or 10 students, participated.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Creating and publishing art is a privilege. Our group had infinite access to everything we could ever want, but our authors don\u2019t,&rdquo; said student Clarisa Wegesend. &ldquo;Simple daily items such as pen and paper are taken away from them, limiting their creation to certain hours or days of the week. And these works, most likely, never would have been published unless people with privilege&#8212;like our professor and group&#8212;decided to work on it. This begs the question of when did we start viewing art as a privilege?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>It was no easy process for Rost-Banik to manifest the newsletter into reality, although similar projects had been approved before in <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai&#699;i<\/span> by other ambitious instructors. At <abbr>东精影业<\/abbr> M\u0101noa in January 2023, Rost-Banik had worked with women at <abbr>WCCC<\/abbr> to start a voluntary, non-credit creative writing class. A year later in January 2024, the newsletter idea was embraced by her Women and Crime class, thanks to formal approval from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and <abbr>WCCC<\/abbr> warden and chief of security.<\/p>\n<p>To read the entire story, visit the <a href=\"https:\/\/socialsciences.manoa.hawaii.edu\/the-humanizing-project\/\"><abbr>东精影业<\/abbr> M\u0101noa College of Social Sciences website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The newsletter is filled with poetry, art, quotes, testimonies and general creativity produced by about 11 residents at the Women\u2019s Community Correctional Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[105,301,1466,1157,1026,261,9,66],"class_list":["post-199702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-news","tag-art","tag-college-of-social-sciences","tag-manoa-enhancing-student-success","tag-mental-health","tag-social-science","tag-sociology","tag-uh-manoa","tag-windward-community-college","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199702"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199709,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199702\/revisions\/199709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}