Sharon White-Harrigan

MAKERS sits down with Sharon White-Harrigan who can be described with one word - unbreakable. She faced physical abuse, an attempted rape, a racist court system and more than 10 years in a maximum security prison. And yet she came...

MAKERS sits down with Sharon White-Harrigan who can be described with one word - unbreakable. She faced physical abuse, an attempted rape, a racist court system and more than 10 years in a maximum security prison. And yet she came out of it all with a mission to put the "correctional" back in the correctional system. "They just put you all in one place, and it's like a dog fight," she says. "There's nothing correctional about the Department of Corrections." White-Harrigan grew up in the Bronx and faced challenges early. She became a single mother at 16 when her fiance was killed in a car accident. She married another man who became violent. "The black eyes, fractured jaw, fractured ribs, the bruises. He tried to pull me into the alley and kill me." After escaping her marriage, another man tried to rape her. "I fought for my life." She stabbed him in self-defense, and he died. White-Harrigan turned herself into authorities with a case of self-defense. But justice wasn't blind. "It was about the color of my skin. They only cared about locking up this black girl for defending herself." She was sentenced to 9 to 18 years at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York. "When I got there, I realized that the majority of the women were there because of a man." In 1994, Harrigan-White went into prison angry, but came out an activist. "I decided that I'm going to do everything that I can to be the best that I can be because one day I will come home. And when I do, I'm going to be a force to reckon with." Through a Women's Prison Association program, White-Harrigan earned her associate's degree during her sentence and went on to earn a master's degree in clinical social work after she was released in 2004. Every job application asks about prior convictions. And nearly every time a former prisoner answers "yes," they don't get the job. White-Harrigan faced this herself, until she applied for a job with the WPA, where she became a peer mentor. Today, she's the director of Hopper Home, a shelter program to help women transition back to civilian life that's supported by the WPA. "I'm an advocate and activist to make sure that the women coming home get the help and support they need," she says. "The women coming home, we're a sisterhood."

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Sharon White-Harrigan, Prison Reform Activist

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