Very pleased to see a public discussion forum for women offenders. My question concerns existing training materials for staff working in women's prisons. I am working as a consultant in operational practice with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and one of my tasks is the development of a 40 hour training curricula for all staff working in the women's prison in CA. I have collected all the NIC training materials, the latest from the Michigan Dept. of Corrections, the Florida material developed by Chris Rausche and a draft developed for the Idaho DOC. I am also purchasing the ACA material on women offenders. We will be developing curricula and interactive exercises for use in our system. The first phase involves adult institutional staff but would be interested in any community corrections or juvenile female materials as well. I am writing to ask if anyone is aware of other materials and approaches used in training staff in working with women offenders in the institutional settings. I can be reached at
barbarao@csufresno.edu or 559/ 278-5715. Once curricula has been developed and tested, I will make arrangements with CDCR and NIC to post the final product. Thank you. Barbara Owen