Looking at Danielle Barcheers, it's impossible to imagine her as a killer.
The perky 34-year-old often wears a smile and makes repeated apologies for the "mess" in her spotless cell. She comes off like a beam of light amid the 1,640 women serving time at the California Institution for Women in northern Corona.
She's come a long way. In 1997, 15-year-old Barcheers became the youngest girl in California at the time to be tried and convicted as an adult after helping murder her boyfriend's grandmother.
Sentenced to 25 years to life, politicians bragged about locking away a child they considered an uncorrectable bad seed ā a distinction Barcheers found herself believing for a long time.
But in the 18 years since she first said goodbye to her physical freedom, she's found another way to free herself and other women as a mentor and certified drug counselor.
Most of these women were victims themselves, prison counselors say ā victims of addiction, physical abuse, sexual violence and broken homes. But somewhere along the way, they became the victimizers.
Since Barcheers was sentenced, she's seen a 180-degree change in the political attitude about rehabilitation. Today, prison officials look to education, counseling and social programs to help provide the women their greatest opportunity to escape the cycle of violence.
[For more of this story, written by Anna Rumer, go to http://www.desertsun.com/story...men-prison/32088893/]
Comments (0)