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When you’re on suicide watch, you’re in a big quilted gown they call a turtle suit you don’t have underwear or socks there’s windows everywhere so you can be watched you have to knock on the window to ask someone to come unlock the bathroom, and it’s freezing cold and lights on 24⁄ 7. I had an altercation with an officer, and when I reported it, they administration told me, “You seem unstable so we’re going to put you on suicide watch.” They left me there for three weeks. They would stick me on suicide watch, which was way more degrading than normal incarceration. One of the ways they punished me when I went to prison was that they put me in a segregated housing unit because I was documented as having a mental health disorder. We are people who have multiple marginalized identities. Not only trauma within the home but external traumas like racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia. At the heart of everything, we have something in common, and it’s surviving severe trauma. I primarily worked with people who, like myself, were women of color, queer or trans, and I realized that there’s something here. All kinds of trauma - child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, extreme poverty, homelessness, and mental illness. I did hundreds of these in the four and a half years I was incarcerated, and I noticed a common theme under the family history section - trauma. So before I would help women with their pro se motions for post-conviction relief, or sometimes it was just getting visits with their children, I would ask to see the pre-sentencing report. One thing in there is usually family history. They actually use it to figure out how to turn your grief, your struggles, your trauma against you. It’s supposed to be done to show mitigating factors of why you should get the least punitive sentence, but that’s not what they use it for. There’s something that happens when you’re about to be sentenced called a pre-sentencing report - the court orders the probation department and their social workers to do an investigation into your history as a human. Most people don’t have the skills to put that together, and so people came to me because they knew I had some legal background. After you’ve been sentenced, you can go back to the court and ask a judge to reconsider the sentencing, and it’s usually done by a pro se motion, meaning you’re representing yourself. While I was incarcerated, I started doing post-conviction relief for people. They get to go home, but you’re left there stuck. And then you have officers playing out their own trauma on people who are incarcerated. Prisons and jails are built by men, for men, and run by men, so they pit women against each other. If you don’t have outside support, you’re choosing between hygiene, stamps, or phone calls home. You’re not allowed to touch, you’re not allowed to wear your own clothes, you work making 12 cents an hour, and phone calls cost 23 cents a minute. They have removed you from any source of love. Even if you have a smooth stay, prison is traumatic. When you get to prison and you have mental health problems, they’re exacerbated. I was incarcerated in 2010 for four and a half years in a federal setting. Because people saw me as so exceptional and high functioning, nobody thought, “We need to treat this trauma before we get her off to college.” It still wasn’t treated after I made several suicide attempts. In college, I ended up in abusive relationships, and I married a very abusive man. I experienced every type of abuse you can think of as a child, and I went into foster care when I was in high school. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. The group holds trainings and aims to host conferences to raise awareness about the intersection of trauma and women’s incarceration.Īrnold Ventures spoke with Nuevelle about her own life experiences and what led her to become an advocate for women in prison. In order to raise awareness of that cycle and its effects, Nuevelle launched a nonprofit organization after her release called Who Speaks For Me?.
![intergenerational trauma and school to prison pipeline intergenerational trauma and school to prison pipeline](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f20d90e4b0b80451158d8c/1456344092226-U65SE3HRG2RDWOFRYX0Z/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kPfYRNeTis6W_5T-HLdJdARZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZamWLI2zvYWH8K3-s_4yszcp2ryTI0HqTOaaUohrI8PI9lpGbpEnZPltPUIeLA1CGAHxdvfL2bf7zgvFUACKL0g/image-asset.png)
Nuevelle coined the term “trauma-to-prison pipeline” to describe what happens to so many women and girls who have untreated trauma and who end up entangled in the prison system. resident, who spent more than four years incarcerated, also wants to talk about how important it is for women, especially LGBTQ women of color, to share their stories about the trauma that led them to prison and that they experienced while in prison. Taylar Nuevelle wants to talk about her trauma and struggles with mental illness.