"Life Inside a Women's Prison"
FAIRFIELD, Conn. - In a 1992 article Andi Rierden did for The New York Times on the issue of clemency for battered women, she wrote about a woman in prison in Niantic, Conn., who was serving time for murdering her spouse and described how the woman hoped to receive a pardon. The stories officials told Ms. Rierden as she researched that story intrigued her and led to her most recent work, "The Farm, Life Inside a Women's Prison," published by the University of Massachusetts Press at Amherst.
Granted remarkable access, Ms. Rierden spent over three-and-a-half-years conducting 1,500 hours of interviews with women whose lives have been forever changed by urban violence, drugs, gangs, and abuse. Strolling the grounds of the Connecticut Correctional Institution, nicknamed "The Farm," with inmates and correction officers, sharing meals, attending classes and group counseling sessions, she saw first-hand, and shares with us, how these women adapted to prison, formed friendships and alliances and coped with their separation from children and loved ones.
This was not Andi Rierden's first foray into the dark side of urban life. From 1989 to 1994 while writing about the urban neighborhoods of New Haven for the Sunday New York Times , she saw youngsters she had known get swept up into the drug trade and end up in prison. She was able to talk with drug bosses and gang leaders, "because I knew these kids and they knew and trusted me," she reported. "Because I was friends with the 'Ma' of one of those neighborhoods, I often heard dealers say to one another after I had appeared on the scene, 'It's okay man, she's family.'" That same familiarity and level of trust are apparent in "The Farm."
Orphaned herself by age 13 and "exposed to any number of circumstances that might have led to a life of crime," Ms. Rierden muses over why her life turned out so differently. While researching the book, she admits, "I was often stirred by the notion that I too could be sitting . . . counting the days until my next parole hearing."
Ms. Rierden teaches writing at Fairfield University where she is a favorite with the students.
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