REIMAGINING COMMUNITIES - Community-led solutions to end incarceration of women and girls

REIMAGINING COMMUNITIES
   Community-led solutions to
   end incarceration of women
            and girls

“I support this movement due to being a
formerly incarcerated woman and mother. I can
 bring my experience that I’ve dealt with being
   away from my child as well as my stumbling
          blocks I am running into now.”

We’re Reimagining Our Communities
 Community-led solutions to end incarceration of women and girls

Throughout 2018, the National Council for                       campaigns, goals, and action. As a result,
Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated                          there is no awareness of how efforts of one
Women and Girls conducted a series of                           organization relate to the work of the
listening sessions led by formerly                              others in the space. As public opinion in
incarcerated and directly affected women                        favor of ending mass incarceration has
and girls. These culminated in national                         grown significantly, there’s been less
town hall meetings in communities across                        collective understanding about movement
the country.                                                    ecology. Concerted movement building is
                                                                needed to create meaningful change while
The goals of the year-long exploration were                     recognizing and supporting the community-
1) to hear the experiences, ideas, projects,                    led activism to empower marginalized
and recommendations of directly affected                        communities.
women and girls for ending incarceration of
women and girls; 2) to reimagine their                          Finally, “the story of women’s prison
communities and implement their                                 growth has been obscured by overly broad
strategies; and 3) to begin a conversation                      discussions of the “total” prison population
with other criminal justice reform                                                2
                                                                for too long.” The U.S. incarcerates women
organizations about how they describe their                     at a higher rate than any country in the
work in the movement of criminal justice                        Western Hemisphere and has the second
reform and prison abolition.                                    highest incarceration rate of women in the
                                                                entire world. With more than 219,000
Although 91% of Americans believe in
                                                                women incarcerated on any given day,
criminal justice reform,1 both federal and                      women are the fastest growing incarcerated
state legislation and policy lag behind
                                                                population, increasing by more than 700%
public opinion. More importantly, too little                                                              3
is being done to create change based on the                     from 26,378 in 1980 to 213,722 in 2016.
wants and needs of the communities most
directly affected by mass incarceration.                        This increase has had a disruptive impact on
                                                                children, families, and communities.
We also determined that there is no                             Almost 80% of women in jail were their
common knowledge among criminal legal                           children’s primary caregivers prior to their
                                                                                      4
reformers, prison abolition organizations,                      incarceration, and more than 65% of
and funders about what stage the criminal                       women in state prison have a child under
justice movement is in and no recognition                       18. In addition, 73% of incarcerated women
that we are all connected within an                                                                   5
ecosystem. Organizations and funders have                       have symptoms of mental illness. African
minimal collective understanding of how                         American girls and Native girls are more
each approach social change and working to                      than three times more likely than white
transfer that theory of change to                               girls to be incarcerated, and a majority of
                                                                them are incarcerated for curfew violations
                                                                                          6
                                                                or as runaways.

1.https://www.aclu.org/news/91-percent-americans-support-criminal-justice-reform-aclu-polling-finds
2.https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/w omen_overtime.html
3. https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/incarcerated-women-and-girls/
4
 http://www.safetyandjusticechallenge.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/overlooked-women-in-jails-
report-web.pdf
1.http://justiceashealing.org/background-facts/
2.https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/incarcerated-women-and-girls/

Women carry the burdens arising from            The recommendations also recognized that
intertwined systems of oppression, poverty,     incarceration crosses all social justice
and mass incarceration.                         issues and included increasing resources
Punitive political ideology and practices in    for entrepreneurial and cooperative
the criminal legal system, feelings of          businesses, homeschools, and increased
isolation, and a dramatically shrinking         investment in community public schools,
social safety net have exacerbated these        access to housing, and creating platforms
burdens. Yet those who are incarcerated         to support formerly incarcerated women to
and women and girls living within the           run for office.
neighborhoods disproportionately
represented within the criminal legal          In January 2019, we launched the initiative
system continue to elevate their voices and    Reimagining Communities. It is our collective
ideas with courage, creativity, strength,      contribution to changing decades of mass
and resilience, working to transform their     incarceration and law enforcement led policies.
communities.                                   Our approach is to shift the focus to community-
                                               led approaches designed by directly affected
Unlike current trends in criminal legal        women and girls and implemented within our
reform, none of the recommendations we         neighborhoods. We advocate for and encourage
received during our year of listening          robust foundation investment in these projects
focused on law enforcement, parole,            and campaigns. By focusing on reimagining our
probation, or increasing use of risk           communities, we hope to create local change that
assessment and digital tools such as           moves us closer to our goal of ending
electronic monitoring. Instead, these tools    incarceration of women and girls, helps us define
were considered a part of the current          what that looks like, and ultimately make the
carceral system needing change.                current system obsolete.

The recommendations we heard focused on
community-led solutions for addressing          The National Council for Incarcerated
harm, closing and repurposing jails and         and Formerly Incarcerated Women and
prisons, family reunification, reducing         Girls
reliance on law enforcement, including
parole and probation, using a
transformative justice framework for
addressing violence, community bail funds
and bail outs, safe-use sites including
medication- assisted and community-based
treatment, Participatory Defense, court
watch, women’s circles, and other
initiatives.

#FREEHER
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