Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
The specter of abuse and mental illness haunt the lives of many girls and women in Iowa’s criminal justice system.
“If we do not address the trauma that the women have faced in their lives — if we can’t get them to address that trauma and understand it, we don’t have as much success in sending them back and keeping them out,” said Diann Wilder-Tomlinson, warden of the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville.Women and girls in the system share similar problems and have similar needs. A majority have experienced physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse. Many also have abused alcohol and other drugs or suffer from the effects of mental illness.
“It’s pervasive,” said Kathy Nesteby, coordinator of the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women’s Gender-Specific Services Task Force, created in 1995 to raise awareness of girls in the justice system.
Iowa needs to increase gender-specific services for females that will address those underlying issues said those who work with female offenders. Experts who attended a conference last week on females in the juvenile justice system said services must feature nurturing relationships, provide positive female role models and promote environments where girls and women feel physically and emotionally safe.
“The majority of our women are going to return to the community,” Wilder- Tomlinson said during the first Girl’s Summit, which was held in Urbandale. “In order to prepare them for that, we need to start addressing gender-responsive issues.”
The truth is the majority of girls and women in Iowa get into trouble for non-violent crimes. But the public tends to believe that girls and women are getting more violent because of media stories, but that’s not true, Nesteby said.
The public’s misperception of juvenile girls is, “She’s just a bad seed or a troublemaker or needs to straighten up her act,” said Nesteby. “It’s a lot more complex than that. There are a lot of things that factor into why girls are doing what they’re doing.”
Iowa juvenile statistics for girls from the Iowa Division of Criminal & Juvenile Justice Planning for 2006 show these patterns:
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