Nonprofits team up to empower incarcerated Oklahoma women through journalism

Written By: Brittany Harlow and Rachael Schuit

(TAFT, Okla.) Oklahoma has one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States, with a significant number of women behind bars. This summer, two organizations teamed up to give incarcerated women at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center and Eddie Warrior Correctional Center a platform to share their stories.

Poetic Justice is a nonprofit that empowers women in county jails and prisons through creative arts and restorative writing. 

In 2023, Ellen Stackable, co-founder and executive director of Poetic Justice, met Yukari Kane, CEO of the Prison Journalism Project, a nonprofit that trains incarcerated writers to be journalists and publishes their stories. 

“We believe that in order for a meaningful criminal justice reform to happen, the people who are most impacted should be part of the conversations, should be in the mix, and their experiences should be heard,” Kane said.

The two connected over their shared mission, leading to a joint effort to bring the Prison Journalism Project's curriculum to Oklahoma’s female prisons. 

The goal? Launch a newspaper at each facility.

As part of the project, Kane helped train incarcerated women at Mabel Bassett and Eddie Warrior to write articles, including op-eds and commentaries. This training is part of a larger initiative by the Prison Journalism Project, which published The Prison Writer’s Guide to Media Writing earlier this year.

“We had 11 weeks to go from a group of people who have never done journalism in their [lives] to producing an onsite newspaper,” said Stackable. “They came up with their design, they came up with their mission statement, they chose the articles they were going to do.”

Kane noted that she was initially doubtful they could produce a newspaper in such a short time frame, but was impressed by the women's determination.

“Not even with my university students–I just can't imagine in 11 weeks, going from learning how to do journalism to working on establishing a newspaper, coming up with ideas, writing it, getting it published in newspaper form,” she said. “I just didn't think it was going to happen.”

Poetic Justice plans to keep the initiative going. “This isn't just a one-off newspaper,” said Stackable. “We have funding to do the next three issues, and what's really amazing about this is that we're doing it with the approval of the DOC.”

Kane also says this project is about more than just giving incarcerated women a voice–it’s about ensuring those on the outside hear what they have to say.

“One of the things I've come to learn is that criminal justice and incarceration is closely connected with all of the other problems that we might care about, whether it's urban poverty, public school education, mental illness, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, all of that,” she explained. “If you believe in a strong democracy and everybody should have a voice, this part of our society should be part of the voices.”

And these journalists are already shining a light on stories that have previously gone untold beyond the prison walls. Like the legends of the ghost children that roam the Eddie Warrior facility, guiding readers to the facility’s history as a former Indian Boarding School and then the Deaf, Blind, and Orphan Institute. As well as the old cemetery located on the property where the children are buried. 

The Indian Boarding School, called Haloche Indian Mission School, was opened in 1906, just two years after Taft was founded. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, the community began as a Creek Freedmen settlement. 

“They have a church, they have education, they have a mayor, they have a city council,” said Stackable. “Now, they have a voice through the newspapers.” 

Stackable added these newspapers also provide women at Mabel Bassett and Eddie Warrior with a sense of ownership. 

“One day in class, we'd been editing down because it was like 700 words and we needed to be at 500,” Stackable said. “And I turned to one of our news staff and said, do you want me to edit? She goes, nope. She goes, I'm gonna do it myself first. And then the metaphor she used, she said, in prison they have shakedowns. And every once in a while they come through and guards will check every single item that a woman has to make sure that it is exactly what's supposed to be there. And she said, I'd rather do my own shakedown than have somebody else do it. And so she edited it and it was perfect.” 

You can read the newly launched “Warrior Standard” and “The Mabel Bassett Balance” online here, where donations can also be made. A $5 donation covers the cost of distributing 10 newspapers.