Editor's Note: Pocatello has a City on the Hill that is part of our community but a mystery to most of us.

This city is the Pocatello Women's Correctional Center that overlooks our valley and is largely a world onto itself.

Prison officials are giving the Idaho State Journal access to the facility so that we can reveal what life is like beyond its doors and se-Look for the monthly installments of our City on the Hill series and visit idahostatejournal com to link to the City on the Hill Web site.

The sun has not yet risen over the mountains when the women climb aboard the van to be driven across town. They arrive at the work site and spread out in twos, walking the landscaped terraces of the Portneuf Medical Center, weeding and trimming.

They appear to be average gardeners, outfitted with work gloves and pruning shears. The women engage in small talk as they trim

curity fences. For the next several months, the Journal will report a variety of stories about those who are incarcerated and those who watch over them at Southeast Idaho's only prison. e n i l

t a shrubs and trees. Only the logo on their T-shirts identifies them as work crew inmates from the Pocatello Women's Correctional Center.

They are part of a program that benefits Southeast Idaho, and which helps the women find a sense of self-worth and pride.

"It's about giving back," Kim Curtis says. "I've taken a lot from this community."

Curtis is part of an eightmember crew currently assigned to maintain PMC's grounds one week per month. Several other crews have also departed the prison this morning, headed to work at places such as the Eastern Idaho State Fairgrounds in Blackfoot, or various Idaho Transportation Department sites, some as far east as Montpelier.

The women in work crews do not live inside the prison complex, but in the nearby Community Custody Unit on the grounds. Of the approximately 300 inmates in the prison located on Pocatello's west bench, about 48 reside in the outside unit. All of them work in the community.

Those chosen are determined to be low-risk, based upon a system that assigns points for their crime, their criminal history and their behavior in prison, according to Warden Brian Underwood.

"The higher your points, the less opportunity you have to be out in the work center setting," he says. "(Lower points) means you've behaved yourself in prison, your crime is not real dangerous, you've spent enough time adjusting, etc."

The women are classified when they enter the prison and every six months thereafter.

"We really screen them very well before we put them out there," Underwood says. "You're not going to have someone serving a life sentence, a murderer, in our work center."

The women are afforded small but welcome privileges, such as being able to wear their own clothing. They can walk outside their unit and view the valley below. Only an "imaginary perimeter" contains them.

"I've been the warden now since 2002," Underwood says. "We've had a couple of incidents where ladies on the crew have walked away. They're usually found within a week."

The women are classified as either minimum security or unsupervised. The first group is supervised by a prison official during their work day. Unsupervised designees are able to go into the community without supervision. Seven or eight of the women in the unit are on work release, employed in regular community jobs and earning full wages. A portion of their pay is garnished for purposes such as court-ordered restitution or child support, as well as a small portion of the cost of their incarceration.

"Basically, they have to pay to be out there," he says. "If they get a ride in the van (to work), they pay for that. It mirrors being in society a little bit so they're not shocked when they get out."

The women on work crews earn from 50 to 90 cents per hour. They provide the elbow grease for entities such as the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Bannock County Fair, and Bingham Memorial Hospital, to list a few. Work crews can often be seen in Pocatello watering the flowering baskets along Old Town streets.

The women are always partnered in pairs.

"It keeps us safe," Curtis says. "It also keeps the community safe."

"They can also tell on each other," adds their supervisor, Randy Hopkins.

The women laugh. It is clear they respect Hopkins, and he returns the good will.

The women speak candidly about their histories.

"They're not tight on their crimes," Hopkins says. "And we're not here to judge them - they've already been judged."

Many of them have had drug problems, particularly with methamphetamine. While not all have been found guilty of possessing the drug, it has been the catalyst for many of their crimes.

The women are equally frank as to their underlying problems which led them to engage in criminal behavior. All are grateful for being allowed to participate in work outside the prison.

"It helps you learn to be independent," Cynthia Yeates says. "Some people (in prison) have never worked. Some just want to kick back."

"I had everything handed to me," says Emily Baker. "I've never had to work for what I've had."

Getting into the community custody changed that for Baker. She now relishes the opportunity to work, even though she is paid less than a dollar per hour.

"It give you a lot more selfrespect," Baker says.

When Alysha Aleshire arrived at the prison, she was unmotivated.

"When I was in the main building, I'd watch TV until 3 (a.m.), get up at 2 (p.m.)," she says.

Aleshire attributed her behavior in part to her depression. Eventually, she saw the necessity for change in her life and the community work program as a means to that end. It also broke up the monotony of life inside the walls.

"When you're in the fence, it goes by so slow, you feel like you're dying," she says. Until recently, Aleshire worked for 50 cents an hour. Last month she worked 144 hours and made $72. She recently got a 20-cent raise. "It's a lot to us," she says. Despite their minuscule pay, the women are dedicated workers. "I haven't met a lazy one yet," Hopkins says. "The majority are happy to get out and work. They've got a lot more to prove, especially to themselves."

Curtis relates how a contractor at one work site complimented her crew's work habits.

"He said we work circles around some of their men."

The women recount how people in the community will often stop and ask who they're with. After they explain their inmate status, they are thanked for their work.

Andrea Cooper is back in the work crew after a hiatus. She was painting a 4-H building at the Eastern Idaho State Fairgrounds when she fell off a ladder and broke her hand.

"I kept painting. It hurt, though," she says.

Cooper, 35, has a tentative parole date of October of 2010. Busted for conspiracy to traffic methamphetamine, this is her first felony.

"I waited until I was 35 to get in trouble," she says.

Cooper's troubles stemmed from her relationship with a man, a not uncommon theme among women inmates.

She hopes to gain admission into a community work center, nearer her home in Nampa, where her mother lives with Cooper's children. CWCs are residential facilities that allow offenders to work while becoming reunited with families and the community. The current distance between her and her family makes visitation difficult and infrequent.

Cooper is upbeat, but her time in prison has been hard.

"I'm a baby," she says, noting she cries herself to sleep many nights.

Despite the difficulty of doing time, she wants to retain the memories of her stay as motivation.

"I want to remember these days when I get out," she says.

Cooper's work partner is Aleshire. Unlike Cooper, Aleshire has more than one felony. A lot more.

"I racked up 112 felonies in two years," she says.

She details some of her exploits, including nine convictions. The felonies included 61 individual counts of forgery and 30 burglary and stolen property charges.

"If I get one more felony, I get life," Aleshire says.

Aleshire, 35, has five children. She explains that her meth habit grew out of a sense of shame, rather than a desire to get high.

"I've had to commit crimes to support my kids because I've got no skills," she says, explaining how she would put the kids to bed before going out evenings to engage in illicit conduct. Aleshire is serving time for possession of a controlled substance and burglary.

"I used drugs to hide," she says. "Now I don't have to hide anymore."

Some of her children are now getting into trouble on their own. She stays in contact, sending handmade cards and writing letters. She is driven to get out and use her newfound skills to better parent.

"I think I still have a chance with them, but I've got to get out of here. I haven't seen my family in 17 months," she says. "But I did it to myself.

"I'm such a different person now."

Savannah Berrey can see the light at the end of the tunnel. She is due to be paroled on Dec. 24. The enormity of being released the day before Christmas is not lost on her.

Unlike a majority of women in the prison, Berrey, 25, is not here for meth-related crimes. While every women's story has an element of woe, Berrey's is

truly tragic.

"I lost my son due to my own stupidity," she says.

Berrey was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of her 4-year-old son. Prosecutors alleged that an ember from a marijuana pipe she had been smoking ignited a fire in her home.

"Who knew a small thing could lose a life," she says. "I've learned a lot in prison."

Foremost, Berrey has learned things about herself. She says she has found inner strength and wisdom and a degree of self-respect formerly missing.

"Prison isn't a bad thing if you use it," she says.

She is anxious to be released and reunited with her two children who are currently being cared for by her grandmother in Idaho Falls. She has nearly completed the necessary work to get her GED.

"I've got one more test, but I'm at the top my class," she says.

Berrey's case was a high profile one in Southeast Idaho, and she knows that people have strong opinions about her conduct. Those judgments won't control her.

"I've already been judged," she says. "We know where we're at. I'm going home. She's going home," she adds, motioning to her work partner, Emily Baker.

Emily Baker, 20, grew up immersed in the social ills which eventually led to her imprisonment. She is in her second year at the facility.

Baker's claim to have had everything handed to her seems a harsh self-assessment in light of her family history. Her mother preceded her at the correctional center, and her stepfather has also been in prison.

Her mother has been out of prison for two years and sober for three. She is on the outside now, pulling for her daughter to succeed.

Baker is in prison on theft, burglary and possession of a controlled substance charges. She entered a home of someone who owed her money, which culminated in her arrest.

"I got into a lot of bad relationships," she says.

Like Berrey, she is close to getting her GED. She hopes to go to college when she gets out and pursue a medical assistant degree. She credits her time with getting herself straightened out.

"I've learned coping skills, instead of using (meth) or drinking," she says.

Kim Curtis, 40, is the mother figure of the work crew.

"She really wants to help everybody else," Hopkins says. "It's her third time (in prison). It'll probably be her last."

"I got lucky. I was a threetime loser," she says, referring to convictions in 1999 and 2000 before she received her latest knock, a conviction for forgery out of Ada County.

She knows that if she gets out and screws up again, she will likely spend much of the rest of her life behind bars.

She calls it "the bitch," her personal version of the sword of Damocles hanging over her head.

She is two years down on a four-year fixed sentence, with seven more years indeterminate looming. She was successful after her release in 2002 - for awhile.

"I did well, stayed clean," she says, "and then a man came along …"

While she was not convicted of a drug offense, it clearly had a part in her downfall.

"I was 130 pounds when I went into jail," she says, pointing at her now full figure.

When she gets out, she hopes to do some motivational speaking.

"I want to talk to women about value and self-worth," she says.

The final member of the group (two women in the work crew declined to be interviewed) is Cynthia Yeates.

Yeates, 30, is two years into a three-year fixed, seven-indeterminate sentence for possession and drug trafficking. She is not far from moving up in the system, likely into Therapeutic Community near Boise, a nine-month Intensive substance abuse treatment center.

"I'm looking forward to doing anything and everything I can do to get out," she says.

She is optimistic about her chances. "I'm one of the most positive people," she says.

Yeates' outgoing personality was also the source of her troubles.

"Socializing was my problem," she says. "I've learned how to be bored. I'm happy with who I am today."

Yeates has a job waiting for her when she gets out, running a heavy equipment loader for a company, tearing up roads for pipe replacement and installation. She was employed in the position before her imprisonment.

"My boss has a lot of understanding," she says, noting he had indiscretions with controlled substances in his youth.

Underwood sees the program as part of the prison's mission.

"Our main objective is the protection of Idaho," he says. "If they're leaving better than when they came in the system, we've served our purpose.

"Most offenders get released, so it prepares them for that. That's a big value to us, so we're not just letting them out the gate and saying goodbye.

"The single biggest thing we can do is get these offenders to be motivated to change. I mean, we can have the best programs in the world and if they're not motivated, if they have no desire to change, they won't."

He believes warehousing inmates does little to ensure protection of citizens or rehabilitating the inmates. The work release program serves both purposes, particularly where the offenders are not a

threat to the public.

"They're not evil. They're not going to turn around and hurt you," he says. "In the system, you have criminals and you have lawbreakers. I think we really need to do a good job in separating those out."

Underwood believes that hope for betterment is also shared by the community.

"The Pocatello community is second to none in terms of support we get. I think having a prison in your town, you can have two attitudes," he says. "You can think they're all worth throwing away and they're all scum, or you can say, 'You know what, these are our sons and daughters and we're doing the best we can to help them out.' I think this prison has a culture where we try to do the second.

"(I think the community embraces) the idea that we really are a society that believes people can be better than what they are."