Program helps inmate focus on accountability

Reporter: Anne Ryder
Photographer: Steve Starnes
  
For one year, several hundred Indiana prison inmates have been part of an experiment in changing their lives. For six months, photographer Steve Starnes and I were granted open access to the PLUS unit at the Indiana Women's Prison. It provides a special dorm to inmates ready to change their lives. They pick either a faith or character track and immerse themselves in training. The surprise was who we found on this unit. It's a story of Hope to Tell.
 
Inside the barbed wire at the Indiana women's Prison, it was a pinnacle event. Amy Whitaker of Madison County never imagined her proudest moment would come in prison - not with the burden she carries. "I have a 50, do 25-year sentence for aiding, inducing or causing a murder," Whitaker said. "A lot happened that night."
 
It was January 2002 when Whitaker and three acquaintances robbed and murdered a man outside an Anderson bar. The arrest shocked her parents. A sheltered only child, Whitaker had never been in trouble before. At 21 years old, she was off to prison. 
 
"If you got 50 years - I've lost everything. You realize what you have when it's gone," she said.
 
When the PLUS program, an 18-month faith and character based curriculum, came to the Indiana Women's Prison, Whitaker figured she'd never get picked. She wasn't exactly a choir girl.
 
"I thought they were going to pick all these people who were godly and went to church all the time so I didn't think I was going to get in at all and I did," she said.
 
PLUS segregates inmates in a special dorm where they immerse themselves in a year and a half of work, volunteerism and religious or character based study.
 
"We've created a choice and people are recognizing they want to change their environment," said David Donahue, Indiana Dept. Of Corrections commissioner.
 
Midway through the PLUS experience, Whitaker hit a bump. Given a job and some freedom as a messenger, she told staff she was going one place and went to another. She spent several weeks in lock-up off the PLUS unit. She returned, determined to pick up where she left off.
 
Whitaker picked a Christian track and began the process of taking accountability for her crime. "You have to forgive to move on and that's the hardest part is forgiving myself. That's been the biggest struggle. It's a hard thing forgiving yourself of putting yourself in a situation where a man's life was taken," she said.
 
It's a journey her parents are taking with her. From her daughter, Betty Whitaker has learned "that anything can happen to any family just like it happened to us."
 
But the Whitakers say prison has strengthened their family bond. "If it wasn't for them, I couldn't make it. The hope of going home. Their support, because everybody else has faded away," said Whitaker.
 
Amy Whitaker, now 25, isn't due for release until she's 41. She's graduated college but knows she has more to learn. "No matter what you can still grow. There's nothing you can't overcome."
 
She has 16 more years to learn it.
  
The woman handing out diplomas is the Women's Prison Superintendent of more than 30 years, Dana Blank. Many of the inmates credit her with beginning their turnaround through programming and encouragement, even before the PLUS program arrived. But PLUS has been, according to Blank, a success there and she credits the DOC commissioner.

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