Breaking Down the Bars - OWN - Good Programming

 If you haven't seen Breaking Down the Bars program your dvrs to record the episodes ASAP. The show chronicles the lives of women serving time at Rockville Prison in Indiana. These women are bearing their souls on this show. Rather than reinforcing the difference between offenders and non-offenders, this show highlights the humanity of offenders. BDTB gives the viewer the woman's history, her crime, the traumas she has suffered (and her addiction, if she is struggling with addiction). They show old photos, and tell the woman's story from her perspective. The most amazing part of the show is that they incorporate the family members that are waiting for them to return home, most often this includes their mothers, children, and sometimes their lovers. I love this show because it gives you the good and bad, and what you are left with is this tangled knot of a life. It just feels real to me. In the end, I am rooting for the women to get out of Rockville and back to the people that love them. Some of my favorite people featured on the show:


Larretha is a young black lesbian, a who got caught up in an armed robbery. She was a basketball prodigy, who hopes to play for a college upon her release.

Amanda "Shardea" is a gangsta ass white woman, who used to rob people. She is getting help with her addiction and finding out that their is life beyond thuggin.

Tiffany, is a bi-racial beauty who used to strip and robbed men who offered her money for sex. One of those incidents went terribly wrong when her boyfriend beat a man up so bad that he almost died. She is close to being released and will return home to her children. Tiffany's mother has colon cancer which is rapidly progressing.

Dr. Stephanie Covington, Addiction and Trauma Therapist is a standout. Among the people that work at Rockville, she is the most caring, compassionate and informed. She does not treat the women like offenders, she treats them like human beings. This woman is one of the best listeners I've ever seen on television. Covington is drastically different than the "in-house" prison staff. The in-house staff treat the women like they are their crimes and always lead with their disappointment in the women. It is easy to see how "in-house" prison staff are in the business of making more offenders rather than rehabilitating them. They all act like really bad parents who claim that they want you to do better than shoot down all of your hopes/dreams and laugh at you when you have minor setbacks. Thank the universe for Stephanie Covington and everyone like her.

Many of the women's backstories involve them being sexually abused as children, which is really sad and it points to the magnanimity of sexual abuse and, in my mind, reinforces the fact that we need a national movement against child sexual abuse. We need more than lip-service. We need a national awareness campaign. We need to de-stigmatize mental health therapy. We need low-cost therapy.

Also many of the women are dealing with addiction, in many cases the women turned to drugs when they were trying to numb the pain of the sexual trauma. Marinate on that.