 Donna
Ann Smith-Marshall was born on "All Saints Day", November
1, 1966 and is a native of California. She is a wife, mother, writer,
motivational speaker, activist and a publisher who is the founder
and creator of FMA Publishing — www.fmapublishing.com and
the author of TIME ON THE INSIDE Behind The Walls In A Maximum
Security Women's Prison From An Insiders View.
Donna Ann Smith — at the time of her sentencing, was ordered
to serve a prison term of 3 years, 8 months in which she completed
2-1/2 years, from 1993-1995 after not returning in 1991 to serve
a one-year county term in which the prison sentence was originally
suspended. Donna Ann is an expert in the field of women and youth
of incarceration as she has over 13 years of knowledge and experience
living, working and interacting with inmates and civilian staff
in maximum and medium security prisons and halfway houses. Within
the more than 10 years of her release, she continues to see the
newcomer and recidivism rate grow as women going into the penal
system this year alone will increase to 13,500 — 5,500
additional women since she came out. This is a huge increase
and travesty as women of all ages who are mothers, wives, daughters,
sisters, aunts, even grandmothers and now more than ever our
youth, are being separated from loved ones. You also see lives
torn apart due to the separation of mothers from their children
with the hopes of a grandmother, older sibling or some family
member being able to care for the child or worse case, placement
in an already overburden foster care system.
Donna Ann has lived and worked in the United States Largest
Maximum Security Women's Prison — Central California Women's
Facility—CCWF, Northern California where she handled many
processes to include processing newcomers and parolees into prison,
relocation of inmates to various housing units during their sentencing
to balance out the inmate yards as well as resolve/prevent any
conflict between inmates and secretarial services for kitchen
management. Donna Ann was also responsible for processing non-inmate
men and women — civilians to come into the prison to handle
numerous business accounts within the Prison Industry Association – PIA,
which is a government organization within the penal system that
profits from manufacturing goods and services such as coffees,
teas, shoes, jeans, upholstery, carpentry and many more service
for Major U.S. Businesses while using cheap prison labor to produce
this merchandise.
Donna Ann has been a viable part of inmate reform and youth
prevention as she served on the CCWF Women's Advisory Committee —W.A.C.,
which works as a go-between for inmates and prison officials
to build a better understanding of inmates needs and concerns
and to organize various committees and organizations to prevent
prison disturbances or outbreaks as well as assist in any community
efforts to deter youth from a life of crime which will ultimately
lead them into the penal system.
She played a vital role as a motivational speaker working with
a group of inmates and an educator as a part of the Prison Preventors
Group based out of the Live Oaks Medium Security Women's Correctional
Facility, speaking at assemblies in middle and high schools about
my life experiences and sharing various scenarios of "what
would you do in numerous unconstructive situations and challenges
that occurred in your life that could ultimately lead you into
being sentenced to serve time on the inside?" Donna Ann
provided a wealth of valuable information in an effort to talk
about peer and family pressures to help them make wise choices
in an effort for them to have a fulfilling and rewarding life,
not a life that can and will lead youth down a path of destruction
and despair which allows negative circumstances and influences
to impact their level of thinking, understanding, education,
physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well being and life
which can be destructive overall. Donna Ann doesn't hold back
sharing her life experiences of drugs, alcohol, promiscuous sex,
teenage pregnancy, depression and crime as she believes when
a person can share their mistakes in life, it not only helps
their healing, but most often another's.
Donna Ann has worked with young men and women ages 9 thru 18
who are serving and/or have served time in Los Padrinos and Central
Juvenile Halls — Southern California, which are supervised
by the California Youth Authority — YA. While speaking
with these youths, she used an approach of listening, counseling,
educational studies, allowing them to express themselves in open
forums, round table discussions, writing, drawing and encouraging
them to take a proactive approach of taking charge of life by
accepting accountability for their wrong doings, seeking help
spiritually and mentally and never believing the "hype" that
if you've done wrong in life, you'll always do wrong. Believing
this form of negativism will surely diminish their hopes and
dreams.
When speaking with students, she has developed a great method
of talking, listening effectively and allowing students to speak
freely and openly, but respectfully as it is important to be
an authoritative figure with our youth but not sanctimonious
forgetting to share our mistakes in life and making them fear
us as they will shut down and be forced to listen to what is
being said but not digest the valuable information and insight
they need to journey into a productive lifestyle now and in the
future.
Donna Ann has an art of speaking with youth which is why a great
majority feel comfortable sharing their issues, concerns, ideas,
hopes and dreams and she is proud to say that as a mother of
teenagers and young adults she is very proud of them and that
they are progressing very well. Yes there are challenges that
we face as parents, guardians and educators; however in the end,
our youth want and need to be respected, listened to and assisted
in reaching decisions that will result in positive outcomes and
we must become role models in providing valuable, constructive
and beneficial tools necessary for them succeed.
Donna Ann has worked for the Internal Revenue Service-IRS and
General Services Administration-GSA government agencies prior
to going into healthcare which she then worked in management
for King Drew Medical Center as a Program Director in Pediatrics
and as a Supervisor for Child Health and Disability Prevention-CHDP
and Healthy Families Program-HF at Molina Healthcare for a combination
of 15 years between these employers.
Donna Ann is working to establish Lets Focus Development Center
for Women, a Non-profit organization dedicated to assisting women
in various services to include counseling, parenting, educational
development, job training and placement and housing assistance
in an effort to positively progress back into society just as
she did as Donna Ann not only wants to write about the penal
system but do her part in helping too make a change.
As an activist, Donna Ann is working on a Bill to restore the
rights of former prisoners once they complete a successful parole
without having to go through all the bureaucratic loopholes ex-inmates
face and to establish Southern Californian's United for Women
Prisoners — SCUWP to raise awareness about the conditions
of incarceration, the degrading and humiliation, the lack of
medical care, rehabilitation and the comfortableness of prison
which conditions you to view it as a place of acceptance– for
the most part home as well as the grueling conditions first hand
that plague the majority of women behind the walls and their
families.
Donna Ann believes women — everyone should "Live
Your Best Life and Your Best Self" and she is so blessed
to say that she is trying her best to live this motto. She knows
first hand that it is a struggle to stay from behind the walls;
however God, faith, belief in and love of self, responsibility,
accountability, ownership and rehabilitation are a necessity
to stay from doing “Time on the Inside” in an effort
to not adapt a mentality and acceptance of institutionalism.
She also wants to give a clearer understanding of daily life
and survival when “Behind The Walls,” to those in
society that may not be sympathetic to the problems, challenges
and needs that are faced by many individuals in the system that
a need for compassion, rehabilitation and resources are a necessity
to effectively change the lives of individuals who have been
affected by the California Penal System.
Donna Ann was raised in the church from a little girl and knows
that many don’t know that God can and will change all things.
She wants you to know that we must seek Him first and believe
that He along with faith must be the key factor. Once we believe
that God will fulfill all our needs, this is standing on faith
and He truly will do so; however understand it is in His time
not ours. As Psalm 145:18, says, “The Lord is near to all
who call upon Him; To all who call upon Him in truth.” This
is what we must do in order to succeed in this world; call on
God, work together in Prison Ministry and community activism
programs, learn to be forgiving and nonjudgmental and learn that
compassion for others will ultimately lead to doing our part
in making this world a better place for all of us.
Donna Ann currently resides in Southern California with her
husband and four children.
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