She has spent nearly a lifetime suffering in the system

The third in a series of multimedia projects that examine causes for recidivism in the American justice system.

MCLOUD, Okla. — Candace Harp-Harlow fidgets nervously.

The inmate's thin frame is lost in a tan prison uniform. Her hair is pulled up in a bun. The word “Drywater,” her maiden name, is written on her neck, one of many tattoos spread across her body.

Harp-Harlow, 29, explains how she counts her time in prison — in days, not years. In July, she had 4,500 days left in the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center, a women’s medium-security facility 30 miles outside of Oklahoma City. It sits down the road from a cemetery in a small town filled with tiny brick and wooden houses. Confederate flags fly in some front yards.

RE-ENTRY:Is America failing its prisoners?

The prison waiting area sits in sharp contrast to the colorful playroom next door. The room's walls are covered with paintings of Sesame Street characters. But Harp-Harlow's children aren't among the ones who get to play there. Her family doesn't think it's a good idea for them to visit, she says. 

The single mother of five has been in and out of the criminal justice system since she was 12. Like many women who get caught in the system, Harp-Harlow endured a childhood of trauma. She says she was molested at 6 and then was raped and had a child when she was 13. She's battling drug addiction. 

Nearly 40% of women who are incarcerated in America have a history of sexual violence. And once an inmate is in the system, it's hard for her to stay out. About 70% of female inmates return to the system within five years. 

That's in part because many of the programs that help inmates re-enter society have been designed with men in mind, says Bronwyn Hunter, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The programs often aren't appropriate for women, many of them mothers who need child care and other resources. 

“There is, in general, a lack of resources when thinking about transportation or housing programs that will take a woman coming out of prison,” Hunter says. The programs that do exist "are so few in number that they just don’t have the capacity to actually be able to provide resources for every woman who’s coming from the justice system.”  

Hunter researches the health and well-being of people transitioning from prison to the community, and much of her work focuses on women. She notes that research on women in the justice system didn’t take off until about 20 years ago, when there was a substantial increase in the incarceration of women. Society is behind in terms of understanding what women need.  

POLICING THE USA:A look at race, justice, media

On a per capita basis, Oklahoma incarcerates more women than any other state. Laura Pitman, director of population, programs and strategic planning for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, says there are a number of reasons for that, including social ills.

Pitman began her career in mental health for the Department of Corrections. The issues she encountered among women — drug addiction, abuse, violence — easily explained why each one was in the system. "I never sat down with a woman and heard her story and wondered at the end of that, 'How did she come to be in prison?' " Pitman says.

The lack of treatment options in prisons often leads women back to highly self-destructive behavior, says Geneva Brown, a professor of law at Valparaiso University Law School in Indiana.

Recidivism is a failure of the system, Brown says.

“If we have a person who reverts back to criminal deviant behavior," says Brown, who directs the domestic violence clinic at Valparaiso, "then that means we haven’t addressed that person’s issues.”

Softball and beauty pageants

Harp-Harlow, who is Native American, grew up in Tahlequah, a city in Cherokee County, 168 miles from Oklahoma City. When she was a child, she was a runner-up in a beauty pageant and excelled at softball, says her mother, Leighann Quinton.

Her mother worked two jobs but always made sure to show up for Harp-Harlow's games.

HEAR MORE:From Harp-Harlow and her family in their own words

The fact that Quinton worked a lot didn’t help things. Harp-Harlow spent much of her childhood being raised by her grandparents. Quinton says her absence affected their relationship.

“Oh yeah, she holds it against me big time,” Quinton says. “She don’t see it as us working ... she had a roof over her head, she had everything she needed or wanted.”

After Harp-Harlow was raped, her mother says, her life spiraled out of control. She stopped playing ball. She had been a good student, but her grades dropped. She eventually left school after only completing the eighth grade.

She was placed in several juvenile detention facilities but kept getting in more trouble.

It became impossible to keep Harp-Harlow out of jail.

“She couldn’t get one case together before she already had new cases,” Quinton says. 

The hard road back 

Harp-Harlow says after she had her baby at 13, she “kind of went crazy.” She got emancipated from her mother and moved out at age 15. She got married at 17 and worked as a dancer in a topless bar in Tulsa. She was working there when she got arrested for possession of stolen vehicles.

She found herself in prison as an adult for the first time. 

Harp-Harlow remembers turning 21 in Oklahoma's Hillside Community Correctional Center. She says she committed her crimes while on drugs. She was so high that she would wake up behind bars and not necessarily remember how she got there.

She participated in a drug program during her first stint in prison. But Harp-Harlow says she was just going through the motions. Nothing about it resonated with her. She even used meth while she was in prison. And as she transitioned out, still in her early 20s, the first thing she thought about was buying and using drugs.

“I don’t even really remember what they taught me in there," Harp-Harlow says. “They wanted me to go out into the world and find a job. That first day I couldn’t go ‘cause I was scared.”

She returned to the same friends she was hanging out with before she went to prison. After a few days she worked up the nerve to apply for a job at a Sonic restaurant. She was there for two days before leaving. 

She was still committed to finding a good job. She filled out two applications a day. But after a month of looking, she gave up. It was hard for her to get hired with a criminal record. 

“I think maybe I had ... too high expectations for myself whenever I first started out,” Harp-Harlow says. “I expected ... to get a real good-paying job. ... I worked at the club for so long, I was used to having … a good amount of money. I wanted to maybe work at DirecTV or something like that, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t get on." 

Harp-Harlow went back to dancing at that topless bar, where she made $300 to $400 a night. The money was good and she didn't think she had the skills to do anything else. 

A lot of restrictions are placed on recently released felons. Nationwide, there are 48,000 legal restrictions for ex-felons. Many people who are released may not be able to get a Section 8 housing voucher or a grant for school. In some states, entire fields are off limits, such as cosmetology. Some laws also restrict the population groups that ex-felons can work with, such as the elderly and children. If people don’t get an education or job training in prison, they might not be able to get it on the outside, either.

Harp-Harlow was eventually arrested for drug possession and assault. In 2016, she was sentenced to 15 years. 

Women are incarcerated for drug-related crimes in the U.S. at a higher rate than in nearly any other country. In the United Kingdom, for example, only 759 women were locked up for drug use in 2012 (the most recent year for which we could find data). In America, more than 25,000 were locked up in 2014 for the same kinds of offenses.  

Harp-Harlow eventually found a rehab program that clicked for her. It was run by the Choctaw Nation. The fact that she could finally be with one of her kids while she was in the program had a big impact on her emotional well-being. But Harp-Harlow learned the most about herself after completing the rehab program's obstacle course. 

She can still feel goosebumps as she talks about standing on the top of a multistory pole, the most challenging part of the course. She squirms in her chair during the interview as she remembers what came next.   

Someone yelled jump, she recalls. She hesitated, then let one foot fall. The rest of her body quickly followed. She had to learn, she says, to step out on faith. It was the first time in her life she had done that. 

She had been wearing a harness, but that didn't make the jump's mental hurdle any less challenging.

It was a moment of insight. She realized that the faith she exercised on the course had to translate to faith in herself — faith that she could get off of drugs, take care of her kids and find a respectable job. 

Family matters

Harp-Harlow’s five children are split among her father, stepmother and her children's fathers. Her youngest is 4, and her oldest is 15. 

“I try not to think about my kids when I’m in here 'cause when I think about them, it’s the roughest part. I feel like I failed," Harp-Harlow says.

Experts note that when women are incarcerated, family bonds are broken. When the primary nurturer and caretaker is removed, it can cause a strain in relationships, Brown says.

“It’s not that fathers aren’t affected by incarceration, but the mother-child bond is ruptured, which is more severe,” Brown says. "It leads to more severe generational issues with children who act out because their mothers aren’t present."

Harp-Harlow feels that her mother wasn't around. Now she isn't around for her daughter, who seems to be repeating the inmate's childhood patterns.

The teen was expelled from school for drinking. She also ran away and was gone for four months. She was living with a 26-year-old man who is now in jail.

“They call her 'Little Candace.' ... Oh God. I don’t want her to be nothing like me,” Harp-Harlow says. “But I think for her to act right, maybe, you know, I’ve got to act right.”

Harp-Harlow's kids aren't alone. One in 10 children in Oklahoma has had an incarcerated parent. And about a third of women incarcerated in Oklahoma have had one parent or both parents in the system, says Pitman, the prison system director. 

Harp-Harlow certainly wants a better relationship with her daughter than she has had with her own mother. In July, Quinton hadn’t talked to Harp-Harlow in two months. She hadn’t seen her in two years. This isn’t the life she imagined for the little girl she once thought of as a beauty pageant queen.

“She's a beautiful girl. I wanted her to have a beautiful life. She deserves it. I mean, she's so smart and she's so ... talented. She could do anything,” Quinton says. “It's just what she chooses.”

PREVIEW: In Chapter 4, meet ex-Mabel Bassett inmate transitioning back to society through Exodus House

Hunter says re-entry is a hard process, and people often need support to navigate the different systems to avoid going back into the criminal justice system. Community connection and family relationships are key.

This country tries to “focus on reducing recidivism without strengthening somebody’s connections to society,” Hunter says. 

Being at Mabel Bassett has been a wake-up call for Harp-Harlow.

“This is not the life I want to live,” she says. “I see the people that’s here that’s never going home. The people that are doing life and they’re never going to get to go to the creek or lake with their kids. It’s not for me.”

After she completes her sentence, Harp-Harlow says, she plans to get help from the Cherokee Nation, which has re-entry resources. Ultimately, she wants to be better for her kids.

“I just want to go home," Harp-Harlow says as her eyes began to well with tears. "I just want to do right so I can go home and be there for my kids. It’s all I want to do."

Lottie Joiner is a 2017 John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Crime Reporting Fellow and a Fund for Investigative Journalism/Schuster Institute Social Justice Investigative Reporting Fellow.

Visit Policing the USA for more podcasts, videos and interviews with male, female and juvenile inmates across America in coming installments of this series.