Advance Praise for Hidden Healers

Hidden Healers cuts through the many myths associated with incarcerated women to highlight the actual battles they have to face every day within a criminal legal system never designed for them. The book is both a riveting personal account of Dr. Covington’s commitment to gender‐responsive correctional reform over the last 30 years and an amplification of the voices of women who have had to endure repeated systematic harms. The little‐known gem that Hidden Healers poignantly reveals is how often women, despite all this, come together to support one another in the day‐to‐day struggles to provide genuine hope, healing, and meaning. It will be a go‐to book in my library for many years to come.

EMILY J. SALISBURY, PHD
Director, Utah Criminal Justice Center
Research Director, Women’s Risk Needs Assessment Lab
Associate Professor of Social Work
University of Utah

Women make up only about 10 percent of America’s imprisoned population, so men get most of the attention—from a prison system designed with testosterone in mind, and from those who study that system. Stephanie Covington, a psychologist and social worker, has spent three decades helping incarcerated women help one another cope with trauma. Her empathetic and readable portrayal of women’s lives in and after prison deserves a wide readership.

BILL KELLER
Founding editor, The Marshall Project
Former columnist and editor, the New York Times
Author: What’s Prison For? Punishment and Rehabilitation in the Age of Mass Incarceration
Southampton, New York

Hidden Healers is an important book because it reveals the absurdity of calling our justice system for women “just.” It is not an easy book to read because Stephanie Covington, one of our country’s wise women, is merciless in her descriptions of what it is like for a woman to be sent to jail or prison. At the same time, the reader is accompanied on this journey by incarcerated women who are the “hidden healers,” clearly demonstrating the time‐honored caregiving that women provide for each other under adverse conditions. This book should be a mandatory part of the curriculum of every law school in the country.

SANDRA L. BLOOM, MD
Associate Professor, Health Management and Policy
Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

As important as her earlier works have been, the voices of the women with whom she has worked and from whom she has learned makes this her most personal and most important book. Dr. Covington writes in an informed and impassioned voice about what she has learned and the women she has learned it from, in thirty years working in prisons and jails. Hers is a voice of intelligence and compassion, pragmatism, and hopefulness, honed by the sharp edges of the reality of our prisons and jails. A must‐read for everyone interested in prisons and jails today.

MARTIN F. HORN
Secretary of Corrections, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (ret.)
New York City Correction Commissioner (ret.)
Distinguished Lecturer, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (ret.)
New York, New York

Hidden Healers documents what I have witnessed when accompanying Dr. Covington on prison visits: women feeling seen as she validates their situations, histories, and collective voices. Dr. Covington’s portrayals of the pain and isolation experienced as a result of confinement also clearly articulate the need for continued advocacy. She reminds us that advocacy work within prison does not negate or minimize abolitionist views. Rather it speaks to the duality of our obligation: continuing to work with those caught in this draconian web while dismantling oppressive systems.

SHERYL KUBIAK, PHD, MSW
Dean, School of Social Work
Center for Behavioral Health and Justice
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan

Dr. Stephanie Covington has yet again developed an insightful way of thinking about women and their healing journey. With clarity and care she identifies and magnifies what we often do not see. Hidden Healers celebrates individuals who generate hope and inspiration with no expectation of recognition: invisible healers who without formal training make a pivotal difference for another through a moment, a day, or years of kindness and perception. These informal and unlikely individuals know that healing begins when a woman feels worthy and supported.

ANDIE MOSS
Founder and CEO
The Moss Group, Inc.
Washington, DC

Hidden Healers is a gift to those of us who care about women in prison. In sharing her keen insights into the unnecessary suffering created by women’s imprisonment, Dr. Covington highlights those who bring compassion into one of our cruelest institutions. Within the context of her own experience with this world, Dr. Covington provides both the cold, hard facts of the gendered harm of imprisonment and the hope and clear guidance needed to envision alternatives. A must‐read.

BARBARA OWEN, PHD
Professor Emerita, California State University, Fresno
Author: In the Mix: Struggle and Survival in a Women’s Prison
Co‐author: In Search of Safety: Confronting Inequality in Women’s Imprisonment

Stephanie S. Covington’s book, Hidden Healers, should be required reading for anyone interested in the realities of women in prison. This book is the real deal. As a formerly incarcerated woman who spent fifteen years in prison, I found Hidden Healers to be true to life, depicting what that system is like and how it needs to be changed. Women face so many different challenges in prison, and Stephanie Covington’s exhaustive interviews with women in the United States and throughout Europe allow their voices to bring to light the many issues women face before, during, and after prison and their recommendation for a reenvisioning of the entire system.

BEATRICE CODIANNI
Co‐founder of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls

Stephanie Covington’s goal is to make the invisible visible. Not only does she accomplish this, she calls for a social justice response that acknowledges that prisons are harmful and not conducive to healing. This is a must‐read for policymakers, practitioners, advocates, scholars, and all who are compelled to “do one small thing” to promote alternatives to imprisonment.

BARBARA BLOOM, PHD
Professor Emerita, Sonoma State University
Co‐director, Center for Gender & Justice
Petaluma, California

The issues of female imprisonment are the same the world over: abuse, trauma, domestic violence, addiction, and navigating how to mother from inside concrete walls. Dr. Covington writes with authority and compassion about all of these issues in Hidden Healers. Despite the challenges laid out in her latest book, we do know what the answers are—we just need to be bold enough to take the action required.

LADY EDWINA GROSVENOR
Founder of Hope Street
Founder of One Small Thing
London, England

Through compelling interviews with women who have lived experience, Dr. Stephanie Covington has given us a glimpse between the bars of the American criminal legal system. Her interviews with justice‐impacted women amplify the voices of the silenced and show how women use their relationships with each other to create resiliency, build on their strengths, and triumph against all odds.

ASHLEY BAUMAN
President
Bauman Consulting Group
Loveland, Ohio

Dr. Stephanie Covington addresses women in the criminal justice system in her new book, Hidden Healers. However, what is really explored is “the criminal legal” system that evades justice at every turn. Our society continues to turn a blind eye to the reality that incarcerated women face every day and in every state. In conversation with multiple stakeholders within the prison system, Dr. Covington describes the tremendous impacts of grief, generational trauma, sexual assault, and isolation. Through searing personal anecdotes and cutting‐edge research, this book equips criminal legal system practitioners, treatment providers, and policymakers with the knowledge and impetus to address the root causes of women’s incarceration and create pathways to healing and not prison.

MIMI TARRASCH
Chief Program Officer
Women In Recovery/Women’s Justice Programs, Family & Children’s Services
Tulsa, Oklahoma

Stephanie continues to be a leader in both advancing and transforming the criminal justice system—committed to highlighting and training around the areas of gender responsivity and trauma‐informed care. Her work is unparalleled in this space, and she truly is an expert we’ve all come to rely upon and be inspired by.

DOUG BOND
President & CEO
Amity Foundation
Los Angeles, California

After working in the criminal legal system for over 25 years as a criminologist, I am grateful for the opportunity to continue to learn about things I claim to be an expert on. Hidden Healers is a very moving and personal account of Dr. Covington’s journey with...