When I was sentenced to prison for the first time over three years ago, I was scared, desperate, and beyond suicidal. It took me years of unconventional therapy, meditation, and self-discovery to get over a very public humiliation, the loss of a successful career in business and in law, and the general feeling of being both a fraud and failure in the eyes of my family, my peers, my clients, and the community in general.

It took a collective effort to get me out of the self-destructive mode that I was in. I am grateful first and foremost to God for giving me strength and fortitude to keep on living; to my family for supporting me, never doubting me or losing faith in me; and to my former boyfriend for allowing me to bombard his mailbox with endless letters from prison, and for his words of wisdom, advice and encouragement that helped to lift me out of depression that shrouded me for so long.

Months after I became adjusted to being in prison, I realized that I wasn’t alone in my feelings of depression, anxiety, and of low self-worth. There were literally thousands of incarcerated women going through the same experiences that I was going through at the time. Our circumstances and backgrounds were often worlds apart, but the general feelings of hopelessness and defeat were very similar. It seemed that we all went through, or were undergoing a grieving process for the loss of our former lives, our careers, or our freedom.

In prison, I met and befriended women from all walks of life. For the first time ever, I met, conversed with, and lived with strippers, prostitutes, drug dealers, junkies, murderers, pedophiles who were mostly doing time for “drug” or “street” crimes. I also shared this same living space with politicians, entertainers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals doing time for “white collar” or “financial” crimes. We were all forced to live together- we had the choice of either getting along or alienating ourselves from the rest. No one cared either way.

What I learned from this is that we are all the same underneath the layers of resistance that we have each built up around ourselves. We are all human beings that share in the same sorrows, fears, loneliness, happiness, and a multitude of other strong emotions. that go hand in hand with being a woman in prison. I also learned that everyone goes to prison- there is no discrimination- even nuns and soccer moms.

In a 2008 study conducted by the Pew Center on the States (www.pewcenteronthestates.org), statistics show that 1 in every 100 adults are currently in jail or in prison in the United States. At the start of 2008, there were 2,319,258 adults incarcerated in the U.S. One out of every 53 adults incarcerated today is in their 20’s, and one in every 837 is over the age of 55. Although men are thirteen times more likely that women to be incarcerated, there is an upward trend in the number of women being sent to jail or prison every year causing a shortage of bed space in women’s prison facilities throughout the United States.

In 2007, $49 billion dollars was spent on corrections, which is up from $11 billion dollars sent just two decades before. (These are the latest figures available at the time of publication.) It is estimated that over half of all offenders released from jail or prison will re-offend within three years of their release. These statistics show that the recidivism rate has been left virtually unchanged from 20 years ago despite the increased spending on corrections and rehabilitative services provided to inmates. The Pew Center study also shows that most of these incarcerated persons are low-level offenders that pose little or no risk to the community.

Fortunately for the prison community, positive changes are happening with reductions to the sentencing guidelines that will have many prisoners going home sooner that expected. But until we put a stop to this trend of sending everyone to prison, the high cost of incarceration and budget overruns will continue to be the norm here in the United Stated of America.