How Funding Mental Health Could Keep People Out Of Prison

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Indiana Public Media on January 2, 2015 by Gretchen Frazee

Birdena Lee Oakley was at the peak of her career as an opera singer.

“I toured throughout France, Spain, Italy, Germany,” she says. “I went on to perform in different countries such as Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, I traveled all over the world. It was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had.”

It wasn’t easy getting to this point. As a child living in Detroit, both her mother and father were put in prison, and Oakley was sent to live at a halfway house until she could be placed with a foster family.

That never happened

“I ended up spending my junior high school and all throughout my high school years there at the halfway house for women who were getting ready to reenter the community from prison. They were all on probation, and I was sort of like the mascot,” she recalls. “There I learned a lot of street sense. I learned how to be slick, and I also found out that I loved drugs and alcohol.”