Close your eyes and imagine any scenario where you could end up spending years in jail while sharing the same cell as your mother or your father. Then you can understand the hellish reality that Tanya Reid has faced for the past four years, cohabiting a cell with her 60-year-old mother.

“She’s my rock, we have shared a cell at every institution for the past four years. My mom refused to proffer against me, and turn against me and the state locked her up,” Tanya Reid explained.

Tanya Reid, the daughter of reggae superstar Junior Reid, is incarcerated in the United States in Aliceville, a federal correctional institution in Alabama, serving a nine-year drug sentence. Her mother, Claudette Stewart, is also serving time for money laundering and conspiracy for drugs.

Her mother will be released soon under the First Step Act, a critical piece of bipartisan legislation which permits eligible inmates to earn additional time off their sentence for participating in and completing approved Evidence-Based Recidivism Reduction programmes. For every 30 days of qualifying programming activities, inmates can earn 10 days off their sentence.

With her mother soon to be freed, Tanya will have to wait almost four more years before she can freely interact with her own children, a 19 year-old daughter and a 13 year-old son. She is using that time to complete her book, Lit Fire and Shifted Soul, which chronicles her life behind bars and to engage in advocacy to help and support other females in prison.

“This is a hurt place,” she told OBSERVER ONLINE via a phone call.

“This place crushes souls, crushes dreams, the things I have seen here are crazy…the other day a girl in my pod OD’ed, and they were kicking her before they gave her the narcan. I have never seen anything like that, this ah the bottom of the pit, the wickedest prison ever, I can do time, I am an alpha female, but time is rough here.”

Reid’s advocacy group, One Blood Freedom Is A Must, tries to help inmates navigate the prison, and when she gets out, she plans to broaden its reach.

“I saw from first-hand experience that there are too many women in prison for too long. One Blood Freedom Is A Must will provide access to legal resources, direct support and to ultimately reunite family. There is a woman here from Ghana, who got a 27-year sentence for human trafficking, smuggling her own family into the country; she is in her 70s and she has done 18 years, she can’t do another nine,” Tanya Reid said.

“She’s dragging, she is on her last, I want to raise awareness about her plight, and raise funds to get her to return to Ghana before she dies.”

Reid’s advocacy has helped others. Her father, reggae singer Junior Reid posted a photo of an inmate Bernetta Lashay Willis on his page, and the Black Lives Matter movement later hired a lawyer to aid her case. Willis, who is from Alabama, had been sentenced in 2008 to more than 40 years imprisonment in connection with a scheme to defraud FEMA of Hurricane Katrina disaster relief funds. She was released decades early in 2023 when she won her bid for compassionate release, with a sentence of time served, with a ruling by the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.

“There are many more stories like Bernetta’s. I believe that race, poverty, immigration status, inadequate legal assistance and the indifference of some prosecutors and judges creates too many cases of injustices against women accused and convicted,” Tanya Reid said.

She is shocked at the lack of resources allocated to female inmates in the institution, and is worried in particular about the plight of her fellow incarcerated Jamaicans.

”I am calling on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade to reach out to incarcerated Jamaican national women across the USA to see how better they can help access resource services they need,” Reid said.

REHABILITATION IS A SHAM

Aliceville is a low security United States federal prison for female inmates in Alabama.

She complained about the lack of education programmes and even secondary and post -secondary literature at the facility’s library.

“The library in Aliceville consists mostly of romance novels and other books handed-down from incarcerated female here or who have left. It’s a random collection – there are barely any educational resources, magazines and newspapers are often months old. The carreer centre attached to the library hasn’t been functional in years; the electronic job search kiosks are broken. No one has bothered to fix them, “she explained via phone call.

She said that there are also challenges with the Aliceville Medical Department.

”There is one copier and one printer available for a compound of more than 1,400 women which are often out of paper or out of order as well. It is extremely disturbing. How can they profess that they plan to rehabilitate prisoners when there is not enough effort being made to allow them to better themselves for their return to society?” she asked.

Reid believes that the promise of rehabilitation is a sham by the American system set in place for society to think the department is educating and reforming incarcerated prisoners.

“There are too many women in prison , too many mothers in prison, for too long in the United States. They don’t have the educational opportunity or tools to improve themselves. Education is the key factor in recidivism and re-integrate inmates successfully into society,” she added.

Tanya Reid bemoaned the waste of talent and resources.

“Some females incarcerated are so talented and yet sit around all day. There are not nearly enough rehabilitation programs & opportunities available for the too many women in prison who are eager to educate and better themselves for life back in society,” she said.

LIFE OF PRIVILEGE

Reid lived a life of privileged in Jamaica, attending the finest prep and high school before she migrated to live in the USA with her two children. She said she made poor choices and became “too rebellious”, and her own actions ultimately led to her incarceration. She blames no one for the choices she made and went on to say both her parents are good people.

“I love them both and I am thankful for the support from my family,” Reid told OBSERVER ONLINE.

“I was a bit rebellious. I made mistakes, and I am serving my time. However, I would like to improve myself during my incarceration. Job training and education are essential for women to be able to lead good dignified and productive lives outside of prison,” she said.

Junior Reid is proud of his daughter’s advocacy work.

“I am so proud of Tanya, she has always been a leader and it is so gratifying to know that she is defending women of colour who are incarcerated and helping to give a voice to the voiceless and the disenfranchised. She has grown and matured so much and I know she is destined for great things when she is finally released and reintegrated into the society,” Junior Reid said.

He said he intends to use his online platform to raise awareness and generate funds to help incarcerated women.

“Freedom is a must,” the One Blood singer said.

In the meantime, his daughter carries on the good fight from behind the bars. Tanya Reid is a big believer in the power of rehabilitation. She emphasised that there are hundreds of incarcerated women who would want to enroll in workforce training programmes and classes far outstripping the spaces and opportunities offered. She explained that there are hundreds of women on waiting lists for programmes. Education and reforming the department should be one of the top-most priorities in prison, she said.

“This greatly increase the risk of returning to prison absent the skills to earn a living in society. What is happening is directly in opposition to the First Step Act which is designed to help prisoners succeed in their communities upon release,” she reasoned.

REHABILITATION

The First Step Act is intended to cut unnecessarily long federal sentences, improve conditions in federal prison and rehabilitate programmes accordingly for incarcerated individuals to be reintroduced as law abiding members of society.

Prison education research has shown that it reduces recidivism. Prison education has been found to be more effective in lowering recidivism when participants complete the course of programme , and individuals with the largest education deficits tend to benefit more from this type of programming.

According to the Prison Journal, a large -scale multidimensional test of the prison education programmes on offenders behavior, participating in secondary-degree programmes has been found to reduce recidivism by 30 per cent , although better results have often been observed for postsecondary education programming.

Reid pointed to a recent study which showed that research has reported a ROI of $19.62 for prison -based correctional education (basic and post-secondary) and $13.21 for vocational education.

“They shout out the recidivism of re-offenders in communities but they don’t shout out the amount of resources available in prison for workforce development and opportunities to change people lives and human behavior. We need to invest in the incarcerated women to ensure they do better once they re-enter society,” she said.