Championed programs to help nonviolent female offenders
Charlotte Arnold never met a soul that wasn’t worth saving.
She helped start The Program for Female Offenders in 1974 and for more than 20 years built the Pittsburghbased nonprofit agency into an internationally recognized model that championed alternatives to incarceration and other programs for nonviolent female offenders.
Mrs. Arnold was even called to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee about the unique challenges facing incarcerated women and to explain how her program achieved recidivism rates as low as 3.2% when the national average was 40%.
“Charlotte was brilliant. She had foresight and guts in equal amount,” said Michael Flaherty, a clinical psychologist from Murrysville who worked for years with Mrs. Arnold. “And she never minced her words.”
Mrs. Arnold, 90, of New Orleans, La., died April 28 after several years of declining health.
The daughter of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Mrs. Arnold was raised during The Depression in Middletown, N.Y.
“She grew up very, very poor,” said her daughter, Debbie Marx, of New Orleans. “She was the youngest of three, and she had this teacher who really saw in her so much potential. The teacher went to her parents and said, ‘No matter what you have to do to get her there, Charlotte has to go to college.’ It was the only thing she wanted in the whole world.”
Mrs. Arnold attended the State University of New York at Albany, where she earned a bachelor of arts degree.
By the mid-1950s, she came to Pittsburgh, where she became deeply involved in community organizations and causes close to her heart.
“She was a feminist from a very young age,” her daughter said. “It led to a lot of community activism, and she became really involved in Jewish and women’s groups and the civil rights movement in Pittsburgh. And she was a natural organizer. If she was on a committee, she ended up leading the committee.”
Mrs. Arnold was a founding member of Pittsburgh’s
Executive Women’s Council and was the first female president of the Women in the Urban Crisis, a coalition of women’s groups from around the country.
The Program for Female Offenders began in 1974 with $7,500 in funding from the Nixon-era Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. It included Mrs. Arnold and a second staffer in a storefront office, trying to find jobs for female inmates who were recently released from jail.
By 1997, “The Program” as it’s now called, boasted a $2.5 million budget and expanded to include worktraining and drug treatment programs, including the country’s first all-female work-release center, opened in Oakland in 1984, and the Allegheny County Treatment Alternative Center, a coed, residential drug treatment and workrelease facility opened in Oakland in 1993.
Mrs. Arnold felt she succeeded where government struggled because she recognized the root causes that led many women into trouble.
“We never dreamed we would get this big,” Mrs. Arnold told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette when she retired in April 1997. “[The issues] just kept getting deeper. Low self-esteem, no transportation, no one to care for their children, no support, no life skills.”
“Charlotte was a very dynamic advocate and really made a big difference in the community. She was a pioneer,” said Mr. Flaherty, who headed the Institute of Psychiatry and Addiction at St. Francis Medical Center when he joined forces with Mrs. Arnold and late county Commissioner Tom Foerster to open ACTA in the early 1990s.
A “kickass lady who was funny as hell,” her mother was a force of nature who never let others dictate how she felt, her daughter said.
“I remember sitting in the backseat of my mother’s car between two prostitutes and that wasn’t at all unusual,” recalled her daughter. “She had a tremendous amount of empathy for their struggle.”
Mrs. Arnold was recognized many times for her efforts, including as the first recipient of the President’s Award at Carlow University in 1987. In 1997, she was named a “Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania,” by then-Gov. Tom Ridge for her lifetime of achievements.
The latter was especially significant for her mother, who considered herself a hometown Pittsburgher, Ms. Marx said.
“She was born in New York, but she was a true, true Pittsburgh girl,” she said.
Her mother was a fervent sports fan who stayed true to her hometown teams even when she retired to Jupiter, Fla., her daughter said.
“My mother was an autograph hound, and she knew how to meet famous people,” she said. “She would hang me over the railing at Three Rivers Stadium and even Forbes Field to get autographs. We once chased Willie Stargell through the parking lot. She was crazy and just loved sports.”
Mr. Flaherty said he would remember Mrs. Arnold for kicking down boundaries and opening doors for those who couldn’t.
“She was a trailblazer and a zealot who was completely dedicated to the best interests of female offenders,” he said. “She would do whatever she had to to give people a second chance.”
Along with her daughter, Mrs. Arnold is survived by her son Seth L. Ginsburg, of Dallas, Texas, and three grandsons. She was preceded in death by her husband, John R. Arnold, her son Daniel E. Ginsburg, her brother Herbert Skolnick and her sister Thelma Skolnick Michelson.
A memorial service is being planned for a later date in Pittsburgh.
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations are suggested to Tulane Law School Women’s Prison Project at giving.tulane.edu/law and specify the Women’s Prison Project, or to P.O. Box 61075, New Orleans, La. 701619986.