Christina Kovats
Leadership
During the final two years of Christina’s incarceration at IWP, she was the clerk for the higher education program. That may not sound like an exalted position to someone who has never lived or worked in prison, but as Dr. Kelsey Kauffman, the program’s director at the time, explains, Christina was crucial to the program’s success.
Christina was the program’s de facto registrar; she served as liaison between students, faculty, and prison administrators in the education building; organized testing, tutoring, and study halls; and oversaw distribution of textbooks and the program’s very limited supplies of paper, pens and pencils. She routinely worked 12 hours a day, had superb organizational skills, yet always treated everyone with kindness, patience, and good humor. We all loved her.
When Christina was released in 2017, she became the heart of a vast sisterhood of formerly incarcerated women in Indiana that she created. She was moderator of a Facebook group that grew to 700 women who had done time at IWP, Rockville, and Madison. Unlike so much of social media in America, the women were there for one another, supporting each other in any way they could until the crushing weight of the pandemic disrupted most of their lives.
The Chaos Inside
Christina introduces herself and her vlog, The Chaos Inside
Christina sought to record the experiences–bad and good–of her sisters in prison in a series of vlogs on YouTube that—after consulting the formerly incarcerated women’s Facebook group—she named The Chaos Inside. They are all worth watching. We are posting three here, one with Lori Record Logan (who was a much valued member of the Women’s Prison History Project in its earliest years) in which they discuss the cruel system of using women at the prison to monitor other women who were suicidal. The second is a video with Anastazia Schmid discussing the mental health crisis for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. The third is with Michelle Daniel Jones on horrific conditions at the prison during the pandemic and the successful campaign by formerly incarcerated women to help their sisters inside. You can find more of Christina’s interviews on YouTube; look for the channel The Chaos Inside.
Scholarship
Christina was not only instrumental in the day-to-day running of the college program while she was at IWP, she also enrolled in classes herself. While taking American History at the prison in Spring 2017, her instructor encouraged her to write about the origins of the Magdalene Laundry (a.k.a. The House of the Good Shepherd) in Indianapolis. Christina threw herself into the project and eventually submitted her paper to a statewide writing competition, winning first prize for the best undergraduate history paper in Indiana! Her research on Indiana’s House of the Good Shepherd has provided important insight into how these Catholic prisons for women and girls were run and how they sustained themselves through forced labor.
Here is Christina’s award winning paper, which is the basis of her chapter, “Sisters,” in Who Would Believe. Below you can watch her presenting her work to the Indiana Association of Historians in 2019.
When The New York Times ran a scathing article in October 2017 about the horrors of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, “The Lost Children of Tuam,” Christina, Rheann Kelly, and Natalie Medley immediately responded with, “What About the "Lost Children" (and Mothers) of America?” which was published by the History News Network and The Marshall Project.
In 2019, Christina was admitted as a part-time student at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN, where she excelled. As far as we know, she was the first formerly incarcerated student at DePauw. In exchange for free tuition, she started a tutoring program at the local county jail. Then the pandemic hit causing the jail program to close and DePauw to empty its campus. Christina dreams of the day when she can complete her degree.
Christina proudly wearing her DePauw University shirt, 2019
Public Advocacy
Christina started taking courses on Public Policy while she was at the prison, helping to analyze and write critiques of bills before the Indiana legislature on which she and other incarcerated women were among the leading experts in the state (drugs, prisons, inner city food deserts, childhood sexual abuse, and many other topics).
After Christina was released from prison, she joined forces with Kristina Byers (also recently released) and Dr. Kauffman at the Indiana Statehouse to speak more directly on those issues. During the entire 2019 session of the Indiana General Assembly and parts of the 2020 and 2022 sessions, Christina and Kristina worked to educate legislators on the realities of prison life for women and warn of unintended consequences of various bills.
Christina Kovats in the Indiana Senate chamber
Kelsey Kauffman, Kristina Byers, Kristine Bunch, Christina Kovats after testimony in the Senate
Rep. Karlee Macer, Kristine Bunch, Tammy Atwood, Kelsey Kauffman, Christina Kovats, Kristina Byer after testimony in the Indiana House of Representatives
Christina at the Statehouse
Christina Kovats and Kristina Byers at the Statehouse
Here is Christina testifying in January 2020 before the Indiana Senate Committee on Corrections and Criminal Law, successfully opposing a bill to impose more fines and fees on formerly incarcerated people.
To everyone’s astonishment, Christina and Kristina almost single-handedly managed to get the legislature to pass House Bill 1432 to prevent automatic termination of parental rights for women in prisons—on their first try.
Two years later, they persuaded legislators to pass House Bill 1294 unanimously. The bill banned shackling pregnant women in prison, especially during labor, something Christina had experienced first-hand during her incarceration. Christina provided the key testimony. Here is a moving news story on her work.
Christina made great efforts to involve as many of the women in her formerly incarcerated network as possible, keeping them apprised of what was happening at the Statehouse, helping them understand the public policy process, encouraging more of the women to testify, and teaching them how. Here she is making a video for them on how to find their state representative and senator.
Other Policy Work
While incarcerated, Christina was one of the founding members of Constructing Our Future, a re-entry program for women leaving prison that was created and led by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. After her release, she was the Director of Development for COF for several years.
The Constructing Our Future Team at IWP 2017. Front row: Vanessa Thompson, Michelle Danielle Jones, Kristina Byers, Rheann Kelly, D’Antonette Burns; Back row: Natalie Medley, CharDae Avery, Sarah Pender, Dominique Parks, Christina Kovats
In 2019, Christina was named a fellow with Code for America, helping to create a re-entry app for people returning from prison in Indiana, an effort that was unfortunately cut short by the pandemic.