Film Screening and Panel Discussion on Women’s Incarceration in OklahomaIncarceration rates for women have increased 800% across the nation. In #Oklahoma alone, the number of women locked away in prisons has increased more than 17-fold, from 176 in 1978 to 3,114 in 2017. We continue to lead the nation in female incarceration, only second to Idaho, and this devastating phenomenon has caught the attention of the world.
Join us in a private screening of the film Women in Prison: America’s Forgotten Voices by French film studio StudioFact Rights documenting the mass incarceration of women in Oklahoma.Afterwards we will be joined by Kris Steele, the Executive Director of TEEM, Colleen McCarty, the Executive Director of Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, and Tondalao Hall, an advocate for reform and formerly incarcerated individual.
The program Poetic Justice is showcased in this documentary. April Wilkens was a part of that program last year, but is not featured. Colleen McCarty of Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice is on the panel. McCarty is the co-host of the Panic Button podcast, whose first season told the ongoing story of April Wilkens.
The response from the Parole Investigator (who recommended she move forward with parole to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board) for why April was denied a parole hearing in 2022 this year reads thus:
April Wilkens was denied parole for a fourth time this month by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. Richard Smothermon, Edward Konieczny, and Scott Williams all voted against this woman. Larry Morris was her only yes vote, but this time, she didn’t even get a parole hearing. However, the board, this same month, voted to give a full recommendation to the Crossbow Killer, a man whose female victim died by a poisoned arrow. Does this seem fair to you?
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