Free Film Screening about Oklahoma’s female incarceration: ‘Women in Prison: America’s Forgotten Voices’

Film Screening and Panel Discussion on Women’s Incarceration in Oklahoma

Incarceration 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.

 

Issues with April’s 2022 Parole Investigative Report

Linked here is the 2022 Parole Investigative Report by Brittany King and April Wilkens’s responses to the PAROLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE used to make the report. Below is April’s list of issues she found with the DA’s version included in the 2022 report (copied and pasted from an emessage to us, with light editing). The PDFs have OCR.

The main issues she focuses on are:

• Blatant falsehoods from the DA
• The substance abuse history is wrong and does not match her questionnaire answers she submitted (surely a mistake by the PI Investigator)
• She had never been diagnosed with bipolar, borderline personality disorder, or substance abuse disorder before Terry. And the bipolar and borderline personality diagnoses are ill-informed and wrong. Lynda Driskell diagnosed April with PTSD instead, which is spot-on because she is actually an expert. April has not taken psych medication since just after the turn of the century, when she was only taking an antidepressant for depression. The prison has had her classified (as shown in the report) as having NO mental health issues for many years now.
• You cannot “escape” from 12&12, it is out-patient only and you are free to leave whenever you like.

Battered Woman Syndrome in two cases – the differences in sentencing:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by April Wilkens (@freeaprilwilkens)

Medlin’s conviction was overturned later on. 

VNN story referenced. 

View our Timeline of Event for April’s case. 

Letters of Support needed:

🖊✏🖋April’s attorney has asked us to coordinate letters of support for the parole investigator. You can send them to freeaprilwilkens@gmail.com.

Please address them “To whom it may concern” and date the letter. Please sign and include contact information such as an email, phone number, or address.

It would be helpful if you could focus on:
-how you know April or know about April.
-the positive things she has been able to accomplish in prison
-the positive things she could do if she were released