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Redina Rodriguez is one of a dozen formerly incarcerated women taking part in a 10-week program called Women Working for a Change, run by the Philadelphia anti-violence group Mothers in Charge.

Redina committed her first crime 25 years ago. It was 1992. She was 24.

“I had a difficult childhood, and, instead of turning to drugs, I turned to relationships,” she says, “and I turned to the first drug that the guy I was in a relationship had — and it stuck.”

She got hooked on crack cocaine.

Redina and a friend were arrested for forging about $450 in checks and cashing them at Pathmark and Giant grocery stores in Central Pennsylvania, where she grew up.

Eventually, Redina pleaded guilty to three felony charges and was sentenced to 23 months probation. That touched off a vicious cycle of addiction and probation violations that went on for years.

Then, Redina left the county without permission. She was eventually found at a notorious crack house in Harrisburg and brought before a judge in Dauphin County for yet another violation.

He resentenced her to three to 21 years at SCI Muncy, a state women’s prison in Northeast Pennsylvania, but that didn’t stop the cycle. Redina went in and out of prison five times for violating parole by using drugs. The sixth time she was sent to prison was for a DUI in 2014, her first new charge in more than two decades.

The last 25 years of Redina’s life mirror a perennially troubling statistic: Every month, about 1,800 people are released from Pennsylvania state prisons and more than half of them — 60.9 percent — will be arrested again or back behind bars within three years. Nationally, the recidivism rate is 67.8 percent.

In Pennsylvania last year, almost 60 percent of female inmates in state prisons required intense substance-abuse treatment, compared with about 40 percent of male inmates. And 70 percent of female inmates were on the mental health roster, compared with about 25 percent of male inmates.

Redina says gnawing guilt over her failures as a mother used to drive her back to using drugs and alcohol. A penchant for manipulating men also fueled that cycle, as did the emotional wounds of her own chaotic childhood — Redina says she grew up feeling unloved and unwanted, and that she had been sexually abused by her stepfather.

Now, Mothers in Charge is trying to help Redina work through those feelings and take responsibility for her past choices, so she can move forward with her life.

We would like to thank WHYY for the content. Click HERE to view the original comprehensive article or listen to the podcast.