Pilot project to reach out to women jail inmates.

Byline: Bill Bishop The Register-Guard

If women criminals have anything in common, it is a history of drug abuse, domestic violence and criminal thinking patterns.

Womenspace, a nonprofit education and support agency for domestic violence survivors, is launching a pilot project that takes on all three issues in an effort to get women out of the criminal justice system and back on the right side of the law.

With a $7,000 grant from Trust Management Services of Waldport, Womenspace will conduct support groups in the Lane County Jail to reach about 100 women through June 2006. The group sessions will combine approaches shown to be successful in treating the three issues separately, Womenspace Executive Director Cheryl O'Neill said.

"We don't know of any other curriculum like it. We couldn't find one, which is why we created this," O'Neill said.

It's a small grant, but a first step toward testing an idea that advocates say could significantly reduce the number of women cycling in and out of the criminal justice system.

The effort stems from a survey of women prison inmates published in 2002 that showed 85 percent of women inmates are victims of domestic violence, more than half committed a crime to please an abuser and 22 percent went to jail to avoid a partner's violence.

The 2002 survey - conducted by Jean Daugherty of Eugene-based Sponsors Inc. and the Oregon Social Learning Center - also found 45 percent of women inmates committed crimes to get drugs for a partner and 29 percent did crimes under threat by a partner.

"Nearly all the women surveyed had experienced significant abuse, and many had committed crimes as a direct result of that abuse," Women- space Development Director Elaine Phillips said. "Nearly 100 percent of these women also struggled with addiction, which was keeping them trapped in this cycle of abuse and incarceration."

The large role that domestic violence plays in the lives of women criminals caught the attention of Womenspace counselors, who began considering ways to address the issue among local jail inmates.

"These women, a lot of times, get left out," O'Neill said. "Even though they are victims of a crime, they're in jail."

Womenspace informally tested the new curriculum on women inmates before applying for the pilot project grant, O'Neill said.

"We've had a chance to use it a little bit in the jail, so we wanted a chance to really try it," she said. "Our hope is if we can gather evidence that this is a positive experiment, then we'll have a better chance of getting it funded for a longer period of time."