"I Grow Every Day, like Plants.” An Evaluation of a Gardening Program for Women in a Residential Community Corrections Setting

Abstract

Therapeutic gardening in corrections is a positive and rehabilitative intervention, yet research on its effects on well-being is lagging. We present findings from a pilot gardening program in a residential community corrections facility for women based on analyses of data including anonymously written reflections of participants, interviews with community partners, and ethnographic observations of the program. Data demonstrate that along with acquiring technical skills, women reported mental and physical benefits, such as therapeutic and de-stressing effects for better mental health, increased exercise, and improved understanding of the role of nutritious food in overall health. We also identified interactional effects that aid in building team culture, promoting client-staff interaction, and developing positive relationships and stronger social skills among participating women. We argue that gardening provides low-cost programming that contributes to better health outcomes, empowerment and holds the potential to create a space of agency; centering women’s voices while creating an additional source of nutritional food in correctional facilities.

Keywords:

• Clinical sociology
• community corrections
• food insecurity
• gardening
• qualitative methods
• women

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are grateful to all women who participated in the garden program, bringing an open mind and so much motivation to the shared growing space. We also thank Lisa Nunn and her team from Let's Grow Akron and Jacqueline Kowalski from the OSU Extension Office Summit County for their fantastic support of the project. In addition, Dr. Alec Boros has been a champion for the garden project, and we are thankful for his critical feedback and essential ideas throughout the process. Finally, we also thank the anonymous reviewers, as well as Amber Martinez, Dr. Kathryn Feltey, Dr. Melissa Thompson, and Dr. Robert Peralta for their time and wisdom spent on this paper. UA IRB Number: 20191102.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 It is important to clarify some of the language and definitions we are using in this paper at the very start. You will notice that in this chapter we will not refer to our participants as “inmates” or “offenders.” We choose to use person-first language, introduced by the disabilities rights movement, to avoid turning the conviction of a crime into an all-encompassing label. We do this in an effort to humanize language in the field of corrections research and to convey that we work with women who have been technically incarcerated, but have many social identities as well as numerous talents and skills. The term “women” in this paper describes all participants we worked with for this project that were residents of a community corrections facility which admits individuals based on the assigned and documented sex category of “female.” We are aware that some of the participants' gender identity may be beyond the notion of “woman,'' yet other gender identities did not emerge as a theme during our data collection, even though we signaled discussion space for this topic in field interactions (e.g. by asking for preferred pronouns).

2 No transgender resident was present in the facility during our fieldwork. Standard 115.42(c) of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (effective since 2012 in all correctional facilities in the U.S.) provides for the possibility to decide on transgender clients’ housing on a case by case basis and allows for housing of a client assigned male at birth to be housed in a facility for females.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Summer 2020 Faculty Research Committee (FRC) Fellowship from the University of Akron, Ohio.