Last month, seven women at the Chesapeake Correctional Center graduated from the facility’s first reentry program specifically for female inmates.

The men there have had a reentry program for years to teach them about financial literacy, life skills, parenting and mental health. But formerly incarcerated women face a unique set of challenges after their release, and Chesapeake Sheriff Wallace Chadwick said his office sought to fill that gap.

“Some of them are primary caregivers. Some of them have dealt with trauma, they’ve dealt with addiction, they’ve dealt with domestic abuse themselves,” Chadwick said. “So that’s something that’s very separate than what males would go through, for the most part.”

The program, which began as a six-week class but will be expanded to 10 weeks, is primarily led by volunteers. Inmates are taught about parenting, budgeting, resumes, interviewing for jobs and substance abuse. They attend group therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and write in a journal every day.

The core foundation of the women’s program is similar to that of the men’s, though Chadwick said one of the differences is a focus on family reunification.

“One of the biggest things I hear from some of our former female inmates, our volunteers, is that reintegration into the family,” Chadwick said. “You know, how does mom explain that she’s been gone for so long? What does she tell her kids?”

He said the program taught women how to explain incarceration to their children. Master Deputy Sheriff Kathryn Wilkerson is the program’s coordinator and said the inmates write a letter to their children in their motherhood class.

“A lot of them have a hard time doing it, but when they get up and they say it … most of them are crying,” Wilkerson said. “But it gives them a chance of … voicing how you feel to the world.”

Volunteers with the program said the group becomes a sisterhood. By the end of the class, inmates eat together, share food and do assignments together.

To participate in the program, inmates have to volunteer and be close to their release date. They are put in a separate housing unit together to continue their skills outside of class.

Chadwick said the program aims to curb recidivism.Though it’s difficult to track at the local level, his office estimates a 12.2% re-incarceration rate in Chesapeake. Virginia’s three-year recidivism rate was at 17.6% in 2020.

“People think of a correctional facility as a closed system. You come into the walls and time stops,” Chadwick said. “That’s not what we believe. We believe it’s our job to help better people and put them back into society so they can become productive members.”

He said his office would continue the program in the future and expand as much as possible. The second class will start soon and run until late October.