Women cook their own meals at the Goffstown Women's Prison,but unlike their male counterparts, they can not receive culinary certification.
Credit Emily Corwin / NHPR
Women cook their own meals at the Goffstown Women's Prison,but unlike their male counterparts, they can not receive culinary certification.
Credit Emily Corwin / NHPR
Knives in the Goffstown Prison kitchen are locked down with a steel cable.
Credit Emily Corwin / NHPR
The only prison-run vocational program is hobby-crafts, in which women paint butterfly houses and put holes into cribbage boards shaped like the state of N.H.
Credit Emily Corwin / NHPR
Some women sleep in very small cells. Others share a room with 21 other inmates.
Credit Emily Corwin / NHPR
The Goffstown Women's Prison was originally built as a Hillsboro county jail.
Nearly 24 years after the courts first ordered a new facility for female inmates, the New Hampshire House has approved a capital budget with $38 million set aside for a 224-bed women's prison in Concord.
A class action lawsuit is driving lawmakers to act now.
2013 is a year in which New Hampshire Commissioner of Corrections, William Wrenn will face some considerable challenges. Facilities are packed, jobs have been cut, there's the on going problem of recidivism, and a huge debate over the privatization or partial privatization of prisons. Add to that, a lawsuit filed last August against the State suggesting that women inmates aren't receiving the same treatment and access to services as their male counterparts. Today we sit down with Commissioner Wrenn about this and take your calls.
With Christmas a week away, shoppers are crowding into malls, outlets, and downtown shopping districts looking for last-minute gifts. But, for those looking for unusual handmade gifts, there’s another, unorthodox, option available.
Four female inmates are suing the Department of Corrections for what they say is a disparity of opportunity compared to the male prisoners in the state.
Four women in Goffstown and Concord prisons have filed a suit alleging that the Department of Corrections is out of compliance with the 1987 federal court order that required the state to provide female prisoners with services male inmates already receive.
These services include vocational education, mental health treatment and housing programs.
