In many ways, the salon at Oak Creek Youth Correctional Facility is like any other.
The girls gab and playfully gossip as they sit around the small, multipurpose room in various stages of the process. One holds a towel wrapped around her head, while another blow-dries her hair off to the side, and a third sits in a chair as her hair is braided. They hug and laugh and hype each other up.
“It's, like, just full of love,” said Ramani, one of the girls who goes to the salon in the Albany facility every two weeks when it’s open. She’s done so for years. “There's so much love in this room.”
Oak Creek houses roughly 50 girls and women ages 12-25 who were convicted of juvenile offenses before they were 18. It’s next door to the Jackie Winters Transition Program, which houses another 15 girls. Because the youth have juvenile offenses, most of which Oregon expunges, KLCC is only using their first names.
For about three years, girls at the facility have had the option to pursue a state-approved license in natural hair care. The latest cohort of students graduated in late June.
Participating girls and leaders at Oak Creek agree that the program provides both practical skills and future employment opportunities. But perhaps most importantly, it creates a space within the incarceration setting where the girls can foster community and embrace their creativity.
“I've had such a good time in this room,” Ramani said. “I forget that I'm here, and I feel like I'm out there.”
‘You can't go out in the world and have too many opportunities’
Brandy Nelson is Oak Creek’s career and technical education teacher. She leads the cosmetology program, which includes the nail technology program and the natural hair care certification.
She said testing for the certification is simpler than some of the other programs — students read a book and take a test. But Oak Creek treats it like a post-graduation program, encouraging the girls to practice as much as possible and complete their diploma or GED first before earning the certificate.
“It is 100% the same license that I have, that lots of people have,” Nelson stressed. “It really does mean they can leave and go out and get a job that day.”
Superintendent Kristine Meany said her long-term goal is to give the girls at Oak Creek hands-on, practical skills they can take with them when they leave. But she said the program has immediate benefits as well.
“A lot of our kids come in lagging really basic skills,” Meany said. “And so, teaching them just simple things of how to properly care for your hair is a huge piece that can be missing.”
Nelson said they encourage the nail techs to consider adding the certificate onto their work, too.
“We sort of approach certifications like, ‘You can't have too many,’ you know?” Nelson said. “You can't go out in the world and have too many opportunities.”
The natural hair care certificate is helpful because salon workers can be independently employed.
“I know that the girls who are really serious about it are excited to go out into the world and have that be something that they can do,” Nelson said, “even if it's just part-time, while they do another job.”
But even while still at Oak Creek, the program has had a positive impact on the overall population.
“It’s true for both nails and hair that those programs have elevated the behavior of the entire facility, because it's a privilege to get to do that,” Nelson said.
Nelson said the ability for the girls to individualize their career goals is something particularly special in an incarceration setting.
“How prisons operate, the whole goal is to get everybody doing the exact same thing and behaving the exact same way,” she said. “But when you train someone in a field that requires creativity, you can't really expect everyone to conform to all the same things.”
But the biggest benefit of the salon is the sense of community it gives the girls. She said it gives them something to look forward to “in a place where they don’t have a lot to look forward to.”
“There are real communities that form just around beauty salons,” Nelson said. “You see it in movies and stuff all the time.
“It's a natural gathering place, and a natural place where people hang out and relax and have a good time.”
Stepping into the salon
Every two weeks, professional hairdresser Christal Thompson visits the facility. Thompson owns Cali’s Hands Braiding Studio in Corvallis and has been working with the girls at Oak Creek for years.
Her favorite part, she said, is “making the girls feel good.”
Together, she and the trainees do the hair of the incarcerated youth who want it and have earned the privilege.
Aelina is a graduate of the program. She’s in the Jackie Winters Transition Program and often assists Thompson. She moved around the salon on a recent Tuesday with confidence, a big smile and purple streaks in her hair.
Aelina says she likes to say she’s an artist, not just because she makes music, but because of her work in the salon, too.
“I used to like do, like, my mom's nails, or my sister's nails, and stuff like that, and like pedicures and manicures, ever since I was, like, really little,” she said.
The walls of the Oak Creek salon are covered in a mountainscape wallpaper, with one wall decked out with silver streamers. Pictures of different hairstyles are taped on cabinets and mirrors, near posters about mental health support and addiction recovery.
Aelina sits near the computers across the salon seats as she says she wants to run her own business after release. She wants to start with a salon and one day teach others everything she’s learned. She loves making people feel like a million bucks.
“That first like time where I do something, I'm like, ‘Okay, bear with me, like, I don't know, I've never done this before,’ but then they're like, ‘Dude, like, this looks really good,’” she said, smiling.
Oak Creek’s natural hair care program focuses specifically on Black females’ hair.
For centuries, people have discriminated against Black girls and women in the United States for their hair. Oregon has at least one law in place to address this issue: the Crown Act, which explicitly prohibits race-based hair discrimination in workplaces, schools and housing.
Programs like Oak Creek’s are particularly meaningful to the girls incarcerated there. Nearly half of the girls at Oak Creek are people of color.
Jayda, 16, is a client at the salon. She loves the family feels and vibes they’ve created.
“I feel like you can just be yourself here, and you don't have to, like, act like somebody else, because no one's gonna make fun of you for it, you know?” she said.
Jayda’s not a student in the program, but she comes to the salon regularly.
She said she wants to go to a trade school for cosmetology. But her long-term goal is to start a business that will include hair care for individuals who are homeless.
“I’ll do their hair for like a discount, or maybe for free,” she said. “There are a lot of salons that do lice treatments. I'll do that and, like, just help them get, like, stable and feel better about themselves.”
Jayda said she understands how it feels to be misunderstood in that kind of situation. But when she leaves the salon with a new look?
“I feel, like, fresh. I just feel like a new woman,” she said. “I love it.”
