Joseph Barkoff

Dance to be free

Freedom is a state of mind and around 30 women at the SouthDakota Women’s Prison in the Solemn Public Safety Center feel a little bit morefree in their cell blocks after earning a certificate to help teach dancing andother communal engagement skills to their sister inmates Wednesday Jan. 8 inPierre.

Dance to Be Free (DTBF) is a non-profit that has visited now16 women’s prisons in only 9 states, but its growing, said founder LucyWallace.

“We expand it by teaching the women how to teach eachother,” Wallace said. “I went at first thinking I’ll just teach dance, and thenI thought, oh let’s make this into a teacher training formula. So now we’vebeen to 15 prisons. This is our fifteenth, in our ninth state.”

The program is more predominant in the south, Wallace said,because she feels there is less programming for women in prisons to better themselves, but she notes the south and South Dakota too have had little in thepast. Hopefully that is changing.

“It’s growing in a way that we’re now hiring women who werein prison, who are now out, to do my job,” Wallace said.

Women’s Prison Warden Wanda Markland is all for it. Markland learned about DTBF from her mentor, Vicki Freeman in the Department of Corrections in Tennessee. Freeman told her about the program, so Markland looked it up online.

“I want this at my prison,” Markland said.

Wallace is based out of Colorado, but her company will sendher, or another quilified trainer to any prison for $6,000. Being a program that can self-perpetuate itself though the passing down of healing skills meansit’s positive wherever it goes.

“Normal is a setting on a washing machine,” Wallace said.“Who’s normal?”

Wallace had help facilitating the program with her colleague Chloe Weber, also from Colorado.

“It’s amazing,” Weber said about working with the women.“It’s really humbling, and they teach me a lot about myself, about humanity.”

Wallace leads from the front, while Weber moves around opposite her to help out any of the women. Though both move through and around quite a bit. It is a dance class after all.

“I think seeing how much joy it brings these women who may not have experienced anything at all like this before,” Weber said is her favorite thing.

At first it was difficult to get back in once they were out,Wallace said about women coming back to help. They were in the system, onparole or supervision and they couldn’t do it. Then one prison saw the logic ofallowing someone now out to throw a line back to help those inside.

“A prison let us bring in a formally incarcerated woman, andthat particular woman was in Nebraska, so she is going to go back to the prisonshe is in,” Wallace said. “So now she is working for the state. She’s avolunteer. It’s really a big part of the growth.”

Wallace just wants to help. She wants to show the women howto heal themselves. Prison can be a little tedious and stagnant. The exercisehelps the women heal too.

“Look at their faces, right,” Wallace said when asked whather favorite thing about facilitating the program is. “It’s not easy, but it’skinda the most-easy route to help women heal from trauma. Because we can talkabout it, we can sit around a table and say I wanna think positive thoughts.But is you actually physically move the positive thoughts, the song that wassaying ‘never give up, I found my way,’ and you are physically doing thatmovement it’s so profoundly healing for the brain.”

Dancing is the easy part, it’s keeping the lights on, sogoing out to teach dance is feesible is the hard part, she said.

“It’s obviously very heavy,” Wallace said is the hardestthing about teaching. “Very depressing sometimes. Honestly, the hardest part isrunning the non-profit.”

At the end of the three day program Wallace handed all ofthe women in the class certificates for participating and completing thecourse. Now, their job is to teach coping, communication and dance skills totheir peers and fellow inmates, so they can start healing too.

Earning a degree from the inside

Earning a high school or General Education Diploma is a tremendous step in everyone’s lives. For the first time in history, 90 percent of people in the United Sates over the age of 25 have graduated high school, according to Educational Attainment Data from the U.S.Census Bureau in Dec. 2017.

Across the U.S. most prisons have a GED program for inmates and in South Dakota Women’s Prison in Pierre, it is nodifferent.

“Education is power,” GED teacher at SD Women’s Prison Bob Wolter said. “To be able to move onto something beyond thisGED, I would really like to, I think all of us do, we wanna encourage them to go on to a tech school, go on to cosmetology school, whatever. Getting the GED could be a steppingstone to that next steppingstone, that next step.”

Wolter has taught every level, from kindergarten to now adults for the past seven years in Pierre. He knew he was going to be a teacher, once he got the taste after coaching, he said. He has coached football and basketball, been a principal and even a high school social studies teacher. Social studies is his favorite subject to teach and learn.

“I’m curious about the world,” Wolter said. “Things like location history really is always interesting to me, even when I was a little kid.”

One of the difficulties Wolter faces with each class of women is how long ago they might have had their last classes.Ones that are younger, had been to high school in the past few years, may havea better grasp on what is going on than someone who had been out of school for decade or more, Wolter said.

The hardest thing about teaching is the disinterest the students have sometimes. Not everybody is into it, Wolter said.We have some who really go for it, and some it’s not a big deal for, he said.

Disinterested students is not a problem only found in prisons, but neither is a sense of accomplishment.

“I think the sense of accomplishment they get out of it, that’s what I enjoy,” Wolter said. “You get a graduation going and that’s the culminating event for them of something that for many of them,they’ve been waiting a long time for this to happen. So now they got it done.”

Having a GED is more than just a sense of accomplishment though.

“Inmates who participate in correctional education programs had a 43 percent lower odds of recidivating than those who did not,” according to a report published by the  Rand Corporation in 2013 and referenced in the Federal Bureau of Prisons Education Program Assessment report in 2016.

“It’s very important,” SD Women’s Prison Warden Wanda Markland said. “It’s very hard to get a job without a GED. At least anything that pays well enough for them to make a living.”

Markland has been the warden in Pierre for just over a year now, but she had been an associate warden at West Tennessee State Penitentiary, and has worked in corrections for many years, she knows sometimes the women need a boost.

“It also gives them a sense of accomplishment when they get the GED too. It kinda boosts their self-esteem,where we have a lot of people with low self-esteem, it boosts them to be able to say, ‘yeah I can do this.’”

Sometimes you can really see the sense of accomplishment, she said. There was an inmate once who took the math test sixtimes before completing it.

“I was so proud that she kept trying and didn’t give up,” Markland said.

In cases where students have difficulty Markland says the teachers will go at the different problems in different waysand try to figure out how to help the student overcome their block and learnthe material.

“Both of our GED teachers will work with them and work with them,” Markland said. “They have the patience of a saint.”

The hardest thing about having the program is when girls give up, Markland said. For some the work becomes difficult and the women have difficulty finding the motivation to keep pressing forward and eventually to stop trying is the only negative thing about having the GED program in prisons, she noted.

“My favorite thing about having theprogram is they get a chance to actually graduate,” Markland said. “Maybe notwith their peers that they would’ve in high school but they’re in a differentplace in their life now. Now they need to see they can do this. It gives them achance to get their GED and go onto higher education. Possibly get a job thatpays enough to support themselves and their family.”

Both Markland and Wolter said theybelieve and feel everyone associated with the program believes the women can goon to higher education. Whether they do or not, they are proud to see themachieve.

“Their feeling of accomplishment, youcan’t replace that,” Wolter said. “Whether they move onto another step or not,they’re still gonna have that feeling of accomplishment.”

Women's Prison allows families to attend GED Graduation for first time

There was a high school graduation ceremony inside the South Dakota Women’s Prison in the Solem Public Safety Center Thursday Jan. 23 in Pierre. That’s nothing new. The first time education was offered in prisons was in 1876 in New York.

Though in Pierre, inside the South Dakota Women’s Prison it was the first time inmates families were invited to attend the ceremony thanks to the new Warden Wanda Markland.

Markland has been the warden in Pierre for just over a year now, but she had been an associate warden at West Tennessee State Penitentiary and worked in corrections for many years. She was a little surprised they didn’t allow families in for graduations because they had done it at all the other prison systems she worked in, she said.

It had just snowed, and the roads were icy still from the wind out on the highways, but with only five inmates graduating, the waiting room, turned graduation-hall was the perfect size. There were a couple of families there to see their loved ones graduate.

Not everyone’s family could make it. Some had to choose. Like class valedictorian Stasha Woldt, 35 from Madison, South Dakota.

Woldt’s choice wasn’t that tough of a pick. The choices were, her parents come to the graduation or they come and give her a ride home when she gets out next week.She chose the latter. The weather will be better next week according to the forecast too.

“I get out at the end of the month,” Woldt said.

Woldt laughed about what her mother had said the last timethey spoke.

“It’s kinda a big deal,” Woldt said with a laugh. “’Cause Iam 35. I am a big kid, so my mom is pretty proud of me. She’s like ‘oh my God,we are only 35 years old finally got our GED.’”

Woldt said it wasn’t easy to find a way to get a GED aftershe dropped out.

“I dropped out, which is really sad, probably three monthsbefore I was gonna graduate,” Woldt said. “Just kinda wanted to get outta here.I had got into some trouble with the law and took off, so I didn’t graduate.”

Madison doesn’t offer GED’s, so it’s one of the reasons shenever went and got it, she said. Because, even after all that stuff happened, shewould have to go to Sioux Falls, which is the nearest place for school. Drivingback and forth for just classes wasn’t really feasible, unless you are workingthere.

Woldt feels like she is ready to take on new challenges opento her because her education is moving forward again.

“That kinda opened some doors for me because I can go tocollege,” Woldt said. “One of the issues I was always having was getting a goodjob because I didn’t graduate from high school. Even just having my GED shouldopen some more doors than it did before.”

After her folks come and get her next week, she plans tomove back in with them. Her parents work in Sioux Falls and commute oftenenough she feels she could tag along to attend classes.

There are all kinds of different schools there. Techcolleges and regular colleges, Woldt said.

Going back to school the first time, in a long time wasn’tas tough as she thought it would be.

“It was kinda crazy ‘cause some stuff I struggled in, was really easy for me now,” Woldt said.

Prison isn’t the easiest of environments and taking GED classes there is no easy path. School is never an easy path. Together, theproblem would take persistence to accomplish.

“I think it was you mostly kinda gotta study on your own,”Woldt said is the hardest thing about getting her GED in prison. “To fiteverything you want to in there, because not everything is covered in class.”

Woldt was proud of herself because she managed to do the course for her diploma in about a month, she said.

“I don’t even think I studied for science, in fact, and I scored out of this world,” Woldt said. “I’m a nerd though. I study when I don’t have to.”

Woldt scored the second best score on her exit exams as long as GED professor Bob Wolter has been tracking the scores.He has been at the prison for over 7 years and seen around 200 women graduate he said.

“I think it’s a great program for people,” Woldt said.“Especially in prison, because a lot of them are here that they have gotten introuble and maybe are doing something on the side illegal because they don’t have a proper education.”

Another inmate, who grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but her parents and her daughter are in Brookings, was able to have her family attend.

Miranda Wille, 21, had dropped out at age 16 due to mostly using, she said. She never thought she would graduate high school.

“This is a really good program,” Wille said. “Unless we get it here, a lot of people usually don’t. I never imagined myself, I know I’m only 21, but I honestly never imagined myself even getting it. Being alive to get it. This is a really big accomplishment for me. Essentially, I am here for meth, but I am a heroin addict so I kinda got the (expletive) end of the stick.”

As the ceremony began, Wille’s 11 month old daughter, Mila,broke free from the bonds of her babysitter and began to slide on her belly forward below the empty seats in the row between Wille in the front in the row of five inmates and her family, two rows back. Eventually, Mila worked her way to just underneath her mother, where she settled in and cooed silently while smiling and making eye contact with anyone who would look at her.

Wille said her favorite subject is math and it comes fairly easy for her. Going to class wasn’t always easy though.

“Honestly just getting up and going every day,” Wille said was the hardest thing for her. “I never really had much self-discipline to dosomething like that. I have always had trouble going to school. Actually, allof my legal trouble started with truancy, believe it or not.”

Wille made sure to make the most of this chance for school.

“It gave me something to do,” Wille said. “I’m just sitting here. So it kinda made time go by. It kinda gave me something to look forward to. It wasn’t just like I came to class. I would go back to the block and study or ask for extra packets to work on. It gave me something to do.”

Wille feels the accomplishment of her GED will allow her tonot only go to school when she gets out but find a better job in the meantime.The only job she has had so far has been in fast food, she said. She also said,it was crummy.

“I do,” Wille said. “I do. That’s one of my big dreams is togo to (school for) culinary management. I plan to own my own restaurant.”

Her great-grandmother on her mother’s side was Japanese, and Wille would like to honor that relative and culture with a Japanese restaurant,she said.

“Definitely something of Japanese cuisine,” Wille said.“Maybe a food truck. I like to travel.”

When she gets out, she hope to go home to her grandparents who helped raise her in Milwaukee and plans to attend college there.

Wille’s biggest problem is admittedly self-confidence and completing the GED program she feels really helped give her something she canhold onto.

“I think it gives me confidence because I’ve never really finished anything before, you know,” Wille said. “I was unsuccessfully discharged from DOC, but before that I was on indefinite probation, I never finished either of those. I didn’t finish drug court. I couldn’t stay out onthe ankle monitor. You know, didn’t finish school. Got fired from that job, you know, never ending.”

She did finish and it has opened doors for her she feels. As well, according to research report published by the Rand Corporation in 2013 and referenced in the Federal Bureau of Prisons Education Program Assessment report in 2016,“Inmates who participate in correctional education programs had a 43 percent lower odds of recidivating than those who did not.”

“It gives me confidence that hey, I can do this, you know what I mean. You need to just chill out a little bit, put your mind toward it,and you are capable of doing stuff.”

Wille knows it’s one step in many to come.

“I mean I still have a lot of work to work on myself but definitely just a boost of confidence,” Wille said. “

No one goes to prison for an education vacation but with the first time in history 90 percent of people over 25 have their high school diplomas according to Educational Attainment Data from the U.S.Census Bureau in Dec. 2017, and with the adage being as strong as your weakest link, perhaps the future is looking brighter.

“Oh it feels awesome,” Wille said after.“It feels really good that my family is here too. It really is cool now that Iam all done with the stuff it feels really nice. It’s a big accomplishment and I never thought I’d get it. It makes me feel really good, especially that my sister’s here, my family.”

Wille’s mom, Leah said it’s “awesome” and she is glad it finally happened.

“It’s way cool,” Leah said. “Beyond cool.”

Leah said Miranda has wanted to do the culinary thing for a long time. Her sister Lauren, when Leah made the comment asked Miranda, almost surprised if she still wanted to do that.

“It’s my dream,” Miranda said with abright smile of accomplishment as her daughter Mila silently looked around the room for more faces from the comfort of her mother’s embrace.

After the ceremony those with families present silently celebrated with their loved ones. Others, celebrated briefly,but made their way back to the block. Woldt didn’t have her family there, but she will have photographs, memories and the certificate proving she graduated.

“I think it’s super important,” Woldt said. “If I could havedone anything that was worth coming to prison, it would be to definitely havegotten that. Seriously. You are here doing nothing anyway, so just spendingthat time to do that is totally, totally worth it.”

Human trafficking awareness taught at Women's Prison

January is National Human Trafficking Awareness month and there are things to know going forward. Twenty years ago,the U.S. took its first real stand against trafficking when then President Bill Clinton signed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act.

Ten years ago in 2010, then President Barack Obama proclaimed the month to be designated for the issue that affects almost 25 million people still today in the world.

In 2020 President Donald Trump carriedthat torch forward and declared a similar proclamation against the ugliness of human trafficking and the commitment to end it on Dec. 31, 2019.

“In all its forms, human trafficking is an intolerable blight on any societydedicated to freedom, individual rights, and the rule of law,” Trump wrote inhis proclamation.

In Pierre, at the South Dakota Women’sPrison visiting room inside the Solem Public Safety Center, one South Dakota veteran in the fight against human trafficking presented to a group of women inmates from the Pierre Community Work Center Saturday Jan. 19, 2020.

The information they learn is to help themselves and others, as part of an ongoing group of programs being offered on domestic violence and human trafficking awareness, and healing from trauma thanks in part to people at the prison like Warden Wanda Markland and international advocate for women Pastor Kimberly LaPlante.

“Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some typeof labor or commercial sex act,” Department of Homeland Security defined on its website.

The guest presenter for human trafficking awareness was Lisa Heth, of the Lower Brule Sioux, out of Fort Thompson at CrowCreek. She has been battling against human trafficking for over 28 years, she said.

Currently, one project she runs is anon-profit shelter for women in central South Dakota who are refugees from human trafficking called Pathfinder Center, a project of “Wiconi Wakokiya,”healing families.

“Ithink the biggest thing is prevention awareness,” Heth said. “So they are aware of what the signs (are). What the red flags are to look out for and know the signs. And so they can help others, if they have children, help their children.”

TheDHS agrees with Heth. It says recognized key factors is the first step for victims to be identified and helped.

“Notall indicators listed are present in every human trafficking situation, and the presence or absence of any of the indicators is not necessarily proof of human trafficking,” DHS writes. “The safety of the public as well as the victim isparamount. Do not attempt to confront a suspected trafficker directly or alert a victim to any suspicions. It is up to law enforcement to investigate suspected cases of human trafficking.”

For the presentation, LaPlante, a former chaplain at the women’s prison in Pierre,who has also dedicated over two decades helping women, introduced Heth.

“She’s just got a wealth of knowledge,” LaPlante said.

We all have a purpose and a destiny in our life, Heth began. She feels she is fulfilling her purpose and destiny to help women and victims of human trafficking and domestic violence.

“Probably‘til the day I die,” Heth said. “You live it, and that. It’s just a way of life and I couldn’t imagine it otherwise. I love what I do. I love helping people.Especially doing things like this. Education and awareness.”

She remembers when she first started helping women in domestic violence, she said.She often felt like she wasn’t doing enough. She said the Creator helped her find this path, and she is happy she is still on it 28 years later.

Heth doesn’t think human trafficking will end in her lifetime, but she wants to putthe work in so the next generation, can end it. Maybe in her granddaughter’s lifetime it could end, she said.

“Each one of you have a purpose and a destiny,” Heth said. “You know what the thingis, we all make mistakes in our life, but we learn and we grow from those mistakes. They help us to become stronger.”

In2010 Heth remembers first really learning about human trafficking she said. She was aware of it, but when it hit the news cycle hard that year, she took notice.

By chance, and a little by mistake she was contacted about a building with rooms she could perhaps rent out as a safe house for women and families she was helping. When she went to look at it, one thing popped into her head.

“The only thing that came to my mind was human trafficking victims,” Heth said.“There was not a place in all of South Dakota, just one place specifically for human trafficking victims.”

There were shelters, she said. They would take them in, but they would also not know how to handle the level of trauma and stress they faced, often calling the victims “crazy,” Heth said.

After checking out the building with a feeling from the Creator she was on the rightpath, she found a grant and a bank to give her a loan to open Pathfinder Center in central South Dakota, she said.

Today, Pathfinder is a 14 bed facility for helping victims of human trafficking.

“It’s an amazing house providing all kinds of resources women that have come out of human trafficking,” LaPlantesaid.

LaPlante was the chaplain at the Women’s Prison until recently. She now works with womencoming out of incarceration into the Sioux Falls area. She still works in Pierre part-time to oversee the programs at the prison they have there, she said.

LaPlante spent over twenty years working with at-risk women, she said. Including Asia,where she first started over 20 years ago working with victims of human trafficking and notes worldwide is different from what the U.S. sees in most reported on cases. Internationally, often it is women who are in charge of the victims, not men, as is often seen here.

“I am originally from Sioux Falls, but I’ve lived in Asia, and I’ve lived in Los Angeles and different places,” LaPlante said. “All working in areas of human trafficking there. I started out in Asia about 20 years ago working with victims.”

She spent most of her time in Bangkok, Thailand, she said. Including some time in India and Cambodia working with organizations to work with women coming out of the sex trade industry.

Because,apparently it is big industry. Heth quoted a figure of $300,000 and LaPlantesaid she read recently it could be as much as $400,000 expected from the use of a human being victimized in the illegal trafficking trade.

Working inside the prisons LaPlante sees victims of human trafficking, she said.Sometimes, when they have safe places they will speak out to someone about it.Usually, it is LaPlante they reach out too.

Her favorite thing about doing this kind of work is seeing transformations and seeing hope, LaPlante said.

“Seeing women that have suffered tremendous trauma, and seeing them transformed,”LaPlante said. “Having that hope and that future again.”

Kari, an inmate from Sioux Falls, asked her last name not be used on the release form for her photo and interview to take place, thinks it’s a good issue to get involved in and feels a lot of people don’t even realize it happens in South Dakota, she said.

“I learned a lot tonight,” Kari said. “Just‘cause it doesn’t happen in your church or your world, doesn’t mean it happens anywhere else.”

“My daughter’s 20 (now),” Kari said. “But when she was little, I monitored everything she did online. Everything. Every night when she went to bed, out ritual was ‘okay goodnight, gimme your phone,’and I went through her whole entire phone beginning to end, I had all of her passwords.”

“It’s good to know some of the things,”Kari said. “They pretend to be your friend. It’s good to know for grandkids orso on.”

Signs of human trafficking can be tricky. Some of the signs can be found on abolishmovement.org, where they list their goal is to abolish child sex slavery.

Asstated in the article by the DHS, suspected activity should be reported to the authorities. They are always on the lookout for tips.

Last year the FBI did a sting around the Super Bowl LIII in the Atlanta, Georgia area. There were 169 arrests, including 26 traffickers and 34 individuals trying to engage in sex acts with minors. There were nine juvenile sex trafficking victims recovered, the youngest being 14, and nine adult human trafficking victims identified, according to a press release from the FBI.

Herein South Dakota during Sturgis’ annual rally is a prime target for both victims and stings by law enforcement. The stings are always helped when people noticestrange activities like a potential victim is not allowed to speak for themselves to answer basic questions or extremely mismatched pairs.

Sometimes there is nothing anyone can do to help.

“The saddest thing is when you provided those services and people sometimes end up because of so many layers of trauma, sometimes it’s a hard thing,” Heth said. “For some, they never get over it, addictions that come along with it. Seeing their pain.”

For LaPlante the toughest thing is different.

“Seeing the process sometimes of reentering abusive situations and knowing you can’t stop that,” LaPlante said. “You have to, let go sometimes. And pray a lot.”

The reason Heth keeps coming back to help though is the people.

“Is meeting people,” Heth said is her favorite thing about her job. “Meeting people and sometimes hearing survivor stories. Seeing people’s strengths. It makes it all worth it even if it’s only one person you help,” Heth said. “It’s all worth it. But we’ve helped many, many people.”

In the visiting room of the women’s prison, Kari’s biggest take away from the evening as she heads out from Solem Public Safety Center back to the Pierre Community Work Center is it really opened her eyes to the problem, she said.

“It happens everywhere,” Kari said. “Notjust on news, Special Victim’s Unit on TV, it happens everywhere. It’s good tobe aware.”

Stepping out of the cell and onto the dance floor

Dancing to feel free was the unspoken theme, but Dance to Be Free (DTBF) was the name of the programthat just completed inside the South Dakota Women’s Prison Wednesday Jan. 8 in the Solem Public Safety Center in Pierre.

“I’m so glad I got it here,” Women’s Prison Warden Wanda Markland said.

The program was led by Lucy Wallace, the owner of the 501.3cnon-profit based out of Colorado. The prison in Pierre was the fifteenth prison, in nine states, visited by the program since it began in 2015.

“It is hard (to get programs) because in here, in South Dakota our prisons are on a very limited budget. We don’t have money for a lot of programs. So the financial aspects of programs are always difficult, and asfar as space, here too. This is a $6,000 program. There’s no way we could’ve came up with $6,000 for it. We were lucky she has sponsors. To help us get this program in here.”

Markland knew she had to have it at her prison after hearing about it from her friend and mentor, then watching a news story from CNN on it.

“I want this at my prison,” Markland said. “I emailed her(Wallace) after we got done that day and she emailed me right back. We didn’t have the money. She actually got us sponsors. I was really excited to get it here.”

Markland and Wallace both acknowledge there are more than just classroom locales to fix issues.

“Everybody doesn’t learn from books,” Markland said. “So it’s another way to do it. It’s a physical way for them to do it. For some of them I could even see it was working better than you’d have making them sit in the classroom, where they could be acting up.”

Markland knew it was for her girls and had no apprehensions about moving forward.

“I didn’t have any apprehension about doing it,” Markland said. “I wanted it. As soon as I had seen it and listened to the thing on CNN.That’s the first thing I said, I want this at my prison. Maybe other people area little bit more apprehensive when they hear dancing in prison, but I was not.I looked at it as therapeutic dance.”

The program is three days and involves stretching, dancing,writing in journals and poetry, and sharing.

“Watching the transformation of inmates when they were realizing themselves, the change in them and talking about how it was helping them release. The emotions were coming out and it was helping them do it in a positive way, and they were admitting the activity really helped them.”

Not only does the program self-perpetuate, the women who earned certificates of completion will be next tasked with teaching the class to other inmates. Having the initial program seemed to really make an impact on the whole prison.

“They were looking forward to something,” Markland said.“They were looking forward to the next day in here. Where they don’t feel they have a lot of things to look forward to and this Dance to Be Free was something they looked forward to.”

Dance helps heal the brain through movement, Wallace said she had read n multiple studies. Originally, she was just going to teach the inmates dance. She thought better of it and thought she could teach them to teach each other to heal.

“I know a lot of these girls have trauma,” Markland said.“It’s a different way to deal with it. Any way they are dealing with it in a positive way is a good thing.”

Not all prisons have a lot of access to extra budgetary items, yet they still need programs. While being in prison isn’t about being on vacation, rehabilitation is a commonly used theme word to describe the process.To have rehabilitation, positive activities are needed to realize potential.

“It is very important for the prisons to have something for these girls to do as an outlet, for them to have to learn to be more positive and find ways to get those negative emotions out and deal with stuff in a positive way, Markland said.”

One inmate in the DTBF program, Tori Ray Scheirbeck, 26,from Rapid City has been incarcerated for almost two years. It will be two years in February, she said. She is in for possession of meth.

“With the dancing you can bring your emotion into the dancing,” Scheirbeck said. “If you have anger. If you deal with anger, you’re dancing. You’re out there, fist pumping and doing this, and that’s what I like most about it, you can put you emotion into your dance.”

All of the women at some point rotate to the front of the group to help lead either by example or through voice. It is an exercise in empowerment as much as it is a dance.

“Being able to just be myself,” Scheirbeck said is her favorite thing. “Free. I feel like a free spirit. Just have fun. Laugh. Dance.”

Not all of the women knew each other before showing up inthe first day. Markland hand-picked women she felt would not only benefit from the process but be able to in turn benefit her sisters.

“I knew some of them, but I wasn’t really associated with them,” Scheirbeck said. “It’s kinda nice to interact and meet different people,so that you know when you leave these doors, this dance group, you know who youcan talk to. I’ve gotten a lot of different conversations out of the girls I’ve never had before.”

The ultimate goal is the women get out and become our neighbors. It is encouraging to see the positive interaction, Markland said.

“It takes you out of your comfort zone and you realize,these guys can be my friends,” Scheirbeck said. “You don’t have to try to fit in, pretty much, because you realize that we are all our own self, and at the same time none of us are in here judging each other.”

Sometimes she gets a little nervous dancing and letting loose, she said. But she ends up doing it anyways when she sees other people are being comfortable and she finally gets out and is comfortable too.

Scheirbeck admits the community and interactions inside can sometimes be a bit of a struggle. Especially, an inner struggle within one’s own mind and thoughts.

“The other day they were talking about being a rainbow over someone’s cloud, and this has been my rainbow,” Scheirbeck said. “Because beingin prison and being incarcerated, it could get a little dark. You could begoing through a hard time, but coming to this, it just opens your spirit. I’ve gotten so much lifted off of me. I go back to the block peaceful. It’s been a blessing for them to do all this and even be involved in this group. It’s a blessing.”

“I’ve gone to bed these past three days looking forward tothe next day,” Scheirbeck said. “These past three days since forever I amfinally waking up excited to ‘I’m excited’ the next day. I am looking forwardto it.”

Another inmate, and now graduate of DTBF, Cali Ginsbach, 26,from Bell Fouche has been incarcerated for almost two years as well. She isslotted for release in June 2022 and is in for drug related charges involvingmeth also.

“Being an addict, I tend to want to hide my emotions, or Iwas emotionally dormant before I came into this,” Ginsbach said. “It’s stirredup my emotions in a good way and it’s been a good outlet for them. For theanger and the pain, and things I didn’t even know I had in me. It’s bringingconfidence back into me. Some self-esteem. Just letting loose and being who Iwant to be because I think this is the lowest you get in life and we tend tonot have the best judgment of ourselves. So, just being able to not care whatothers think and not have to meet a standard was very liberating. And it’sbrought a sense of fellowship throughout the prison. There are inmates from maxto minimum, we’re all united. You can definitely tell it has spread throughoutthe units and the blocks, back out there from here. People back in the blocksare listening to music and showing other girls dance moves. I think everyone isreally excited to see what’s next and to keep this going. I think having theinmates lead something, the program, will bring a new excitement to here. Therewill be more devotion with the other inmates because it’s inmate led.”

“The hardest thing (about the program) is probably theactiveness,” Ginsbach said. “Because we tend to nap a lot and eat a lot ofcommissary. But that’s good. We’re all sore, but that’s showing us that we’redoing something we need to be doing. We’re workin’. It’s a good exhaustion.”