Women’s Voices: Advocacy by Criminal Justice-Involved Women

Published in March of 2009 by the Women’s Prison Association & Home

This publication emerged from WPA’s desire to chronicle efforts across the country that help
formerly incarcerated women to prepare themselves to participate in policy debates about
reentry, sentencing, child welfare, and myriad other issues that directly affect their lives.

The program profiles in this report were drawn from questionnaires and phone interviews with
groups from across the country. Our goals in publishing their stories are to document the
extraordinary work that is being done, to provide new ideas for advocacy, and to suggest new
ways of taking on reform of the criminal justice system and other related systems.

Though the groups profiled differ in many ways, there are several common threads:

• Naming solutions, not just problems: Women involved in these advocacy groups are
  actively articulating solutions to the problems they see in their communities. In doing so
  they are redefining the role of formerly incarcerated women in the policymaking process.
• Bridging the inside and outside communities: Many of the groups profiled are
  working both within prisons and in outside communities. By bridging these two worlds,
  incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women can learn from each other and inform
  each other’s advocacy.
• Speaking out: Influencing public opinion through public speaking and media
  appearances is a central goal of most of the groups in this report. By offering media
  training, public speaking training, and workshops on personal storytelling, these groups
  are equipping women to use their voices effectively in the public sphere.
• Supporting new leaders: All of the programs profiled in this report are committed to
  developing the leadership skills in their incarcerated and formerly incarcerated
  participants, and they take on this commitment in different ways. Some groups were
  founded and are run by formerly incarcerated women; others incorporate opportunities
  participants to teach, facilitate, and organize.
• Multiple roads to change: Rallies, lobby days, empowerment workshops, closed-door
  meetings with public officials, open-door public hearings – the groups profiled in this
  report use many tactics to achieve their goals. None rely solely on one avenue for
  bringing about reform.

Along with their many successes, advocacy groups experience significant challenges. Some of
these challenges are specific to the circumstances of past or present criminal justice
involvement, while others are common among organizing initiatives:

• Stress of reentry: For most women returning to life in the community after doing time in
  jail or prison, the demands of finding employment and housing, reconnecting with family,
  maintaining health, and adjusting to outside life are sources of significant stress. From
  time to time, dealing with the major and mundane aspects of everyday life must take a
  front seat to advocacy work.
• Institutional barriers to policy careers: Many women experience a “glass ceiling”
  when they seek to transition from volunteer advocacy work to paid advocacy work.
  While the road to career advancement in social service is relatively transparent (entry level positions, certifications, professional trainings), the path is not as clear for those who want to pursue policy careers. Largely as a result of long-entrenched structural inequalities, expensive colleges, unpaid summer internships, and a robust Rolodex are still the implicit prerequisites for many policy jobs, making them out of reach for many formerly incarcerated women.
• Funding: In a tough economic climate, funding for advocacy work becomes scarce. Most of the organizations profiled here could use more – and more stable – funding. More revenue would them to expand their staff capacity, increase the number of women they reach, and the enhance supports they are able to provide to emerging leaders. More funding could also enable groups to invest in evaluating the impact of their work, so that they, and we, can better learn from their successes.

Read the full report below and download the file at the link provided.

This report was written by the Institute on Women & Criminal Justice. This report was supported in
part by a grant from the Open Society Institute.