3/17/2015 – Crime and Punishment

I learn so much from attending meetings of the local chapter of Sisters in Crime, an association of writers and fans of mystery fiction. This month’s meeting was no exception. Guest speaker was playwright Betty May. As a volunteer with I-WISH, a group of women prisoners at the Maryland Correctional Institution for women, she encouraged them to write about their lives, and then compiled their essays, poems, memoirs, and prayers into a chronological format which became a play called Faces.

Too young, too stupid, too ignorant, these women say and so they made bad choices and bad friends. Now they’re serving life sentences in a maximum security prison. They describe unspeakable things that