A woman who served 30 years in prison brought a message of hope through education to SRJC students March 5 as part of Women’s History Month.

Linda Lee Smith served 30 years in the California Institution for Women after being convicted of second-degree murder and felony child endangerment. She received a life sentence when she couldn’t stop her abusive boyfriend from killing her 2-year-old daughter, but served 30 years of the sentence and was granted parole. Despite it all, she walked out with her head high and continues to excel academically.

Rhonda Findling, chair of women’s history events said, “She has a great story of turning lemons into lemonade.”

After Smith’s conviction, the California Supreme Court reconvicted her of implied malice. According to Smith, implied malice means a reasonable person would have known what he (her boyfriend) was doing and therefore she must have wanted it to happen.

While in prison Smith earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1989 and worked in the prison’s mental health department as a peer counselor for 11 years. Smith said after some time went by she found a program for a theological seminary and completed her certificate of Christian study and the next thing she knew, for the first time in history, they set aside the residency requirement for the seminary and invited her into their master’s program.

She also became a tutor with Chaffey Community College. The tutoring program has a reputation for low recidivism to prison. She continues to work with Chaffey Community College as a tutor of psychology, sociology and astronomy. She speaks as a voice of incarcerated women in various venues.

“Only thing worse than serving time would be wasting the time,” she said.

When Smith arrived at the prison in 1980, she went to the largest women’s prison. Now it’s just one of many and isn’t the biggest in California. She was given a parole hearing in 1989 and granted parole 10 times after that, but the governor kept vetoing it.

Despite it all, Smith did not get discouraged nor did she lose faith. “Proverbs 3:5-6: trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not onto thine own understanding; in all thy ways acknowledge him, he shall direct thy paths; [this] is what I held onto,” she said.

“I hope to help you understand more about women who have been incarcerated,” Smith told the audience. She wanted the audience to realize rules made for incarcerated men are unfairly applied to women. “People confuse equality with fairness.”

She listed the differences between men and women in the prison system to help the audience understand. When men are in prison they form gangs but women form families, Smith said. When a male prisoner has a toothbrush he may be making a shank but a woman is cleaning her cell.

Smith said men and women are not the same and women need to have their needs addressed separately. Smith said only 6-7 percent of incarcerated people in California are women but decisions are made based on the other 93-94 percent. “What is needed is not equality but to have our needs given equal weight.”

Smith also wanted the audience to understand the reasons why most women become incarcerated. “Most incarcerated women have been victims of physical and or sexual abuse, either as children or adults… A high percentage of violent crime is directly attributable to the previous abuse.”

Smith promoted the need to prevent the reasons for women going to prison. An evident change in the times from 1980 to 2012 is that today more people know people who are in prison or have been in prison; this can’t be ignored, she said.

When mothers become incarcerated, it becomes hard on the future generations. “Most incarcerated women are mothers; like 90 percent,” Smith said. As a parting note Smith let the audience know that we need to stop these cycles of violence. It is vital for the next generation to do something with women in incarceration. We need to stop child sexual abuse and domestic violence.

She was glad to see people who care enough to get an education and have a chance to make our world better.

Audience member Carmen Smith said she attended the lecture because she was with a friend but she was expecting something good. She has family members in prison and anything she knows about the prison system to help them is good to know.

Audience member Guen Trippo said, “I am here because a lot of women go to prison but don’t take advantage of the education system. I want to hear what she has to say, and I am glad this is available.”