Supporting Women’s Reentry from Incarceration: Discussing Promising Practices & Future Research

DR. KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for joining today. We're very excited to have this important conversation. But before we get into our discussion, I'm going to first turn it over to our NIJ Director, Nancy La Vigne, to provide some opening remarks. Director La Vigne, take it away.

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: Thank you so much, Kyleigh. And thanks to all our distinguished panelists for taking time out of their busy schedules and very important work to engage on this very important topic. Also thanks to everyone who's joined this webinar. I've been looking at the numbers and they're quite impressive. Clearly, this is a topic of interest to many and for very good reason. I've long been interested in the topic of reentry and what we know about what makes for successful reintegration, what are the experiences both before incarceration, during incarceration, and in the days and weeks and months, and even years, after release that can help promote positive outcomes and help people lead pro-social, law-abiding lives on the outside. There are so many good reasons to focus on reentry and of course this is Second Chance Month. So it's a time to really reflect on all our efforts to support reentry and as NIJ being the research entity. We're looking at not just the types of strategies, but what is most effective and what does the evidence say. 

In the course of my own research on reentry, I became very interested in the specific challenges and opportunities for women who are approaching release and experiencing the reintegration process. I was part of a very large longitudinal study of reentry from prisons several years ago. We interviewed people behind bars and followed them over the year after release and identified a family member or loved one, and interviewed them too. It was a very big robust study. It was called “Returning Home.” And there was a big research team, but I was in charge of the sub-study of women who were being released from prison in Texas and their reintegration experiences. I was not surprised to learn that their experiences leading up to incarceration, and during and after release, were different from those of their male counterparts. But it really underscored for me what our research, and then much subsequent research, lifted to the fore for the field to recognize, and that is that programs designed for men are unlikely to be impactful for women. It underscores the importance of gender-responsive programming. There's a lot around how the experiences and life histories of women who find themselves behind bars are very different and really demand different responses that touches upon gender-responsive programming but also underscores issues of trauma. So many women who end up incarcerated were victims of physical and sexual assault, and often both. 

We’ve also learned about how there are many more resources for men who are reentering the community than there are for women. But that's been changing — changing a lot. You're going to be hearing about that from our panelists, with some exceptional leaders in this regard. I was trying to figure out things to say, Kyleigh, that wouldn't steal your thunder. I know you're going to be sharing more context in a moment. But I would just close by saying, as a woman and as a mother, I find this topic to be very important and compelling. There's a lot that we're doing to divert women from incarceration altogether. When we do end up finding that women are incarcerated, we have to recognize that we're often separating them from their children. That has a lot of huge implications and it also has a real impact on strategies to help promote their successful return so that they can reengage as parents. There's so much we can dig into. I'm really looking forward to this. I will be going off-camera for the rest of this webinar, but I'll be listening intently. I want to let the panelists themselves take center stage, but I am looking forward to it and I'm sure you will enjoy this and find it very informative. Thank you.

DR. KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you so much, Director. And yes, we're so excited to facilitate this conversation today. To that end, I would like to start just by doing a round of introductions. I would like everyone to introduce themselves and talk about their role in this work. So I'll start with myself because I'm already talking. My name is Kyleigh Clark-Moorman as Stacy mentioned in the beginning. I'm a Social Science Research Analyst here at NIJ in the Office of Criminal Justice Systems, so I specialize in corrections research. That often involves working with special populations like women. I was over the moon when I got asked to do a webinar for Second Chance Month and I decided that I wanted to do women and reentry and everyone was very amenable to that, and I was excited to get this great panel together. So I'm going to pass it to each person on the panel to introduce themselves, and I'm going to start with Karl.

KARL LEUKEFELD: Hi, Kyleigh. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Karl Leukefeld and I am the Administrator of the Women and Special Populations branch in the Reentry Services Division of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. So the special populations that the bureau recognizes currently are women, individuals self-identifying as transgender, parents, families, individuals who are pregnant in our custody, those who are aging, those living with disabilities, and veterans. Now that I've said that, I want to thank NIJ for hosting us this afternoon. I think that there's a lot of work that can be done in this area and that's being done both at the federal, the state, the local levels. So thank you for that. To kind of dovetail into what the Director said, I think that there's a lot more room for improvement in what we're doing in gender-responsivity and trauma-informed care when managing and helping women in our custody make that step to reenter their communities. So I'm looking forward to a great discussion this afternoon. Thank you.

DR. KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you so much. And Dr. Sam?

DR. TOPEKA K. SAM: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you all for hosting this and for having my voice included. I'm Dr. Topeka K. Sam, Founder and CEO of The Ladies of Hope Ministries, whose epic vision is to end poverty and incarceration of women and girls locally. We will get into much of our work during this conversation, but just for context, we approach our work through two pillars, direct services and sustainability and advocacy and engagement. We know that we can't advocate for ourselves or anyone else unless our basic human rights are met first, which is access to safe and affordable housing, quality healthcare, and equitable opportunity in a growth-focused career. I come to this work from my own incarceration, having spent three years in federal prison, coming home, being under federal supervision for two years, and being able to travel, really, globally, learning more about the conditions of confinement, working to make sure that they're more humane, specifically for women and girls, and incarceration efforts so that we can keep women home and families connected. Thank you.

DR. KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you so much. And Marta?

MARTA BARRETO: Hi. I'm Marta. I'm formerly incarcerated and I'm actively speaking and sharing my thoughts about the importance of second chances and being a voice for the voiceless. I'm also a part of Lady of Hope Ministries, and I'm really grateful to be here.

DR. KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you so much. Deanne, I'll turn it over to you.

DEANNE BENOS: Hi, I'm Deanne Benos. I'm the Director and Co-founder of the Women's Justice Institute. My other co-founder, Alyssa Benedict, Dr. Alyssa Benedict, I believe is on with us today and I want to acknowledge her. I'm also the former Assistant Director of the Illinois Department of Corrections. I co-founded the Women's Justice Institute to address three areas that I observed were overlooked or often invisible when I was an Administrator over 15, 20 years ago, dating myself. We focus on, first and foremost, reducing or, ideally, ending women's mass incarceration, decarceration efforts, reducing harm created by the lack of policies, practices, procedures, programs that see women and utilize research on women. And then the third part is kind of redefining success as looking at improved health, wellbeing, and outcomes when women engage systems. And so we're really delighted to be here today to share our programs and to learn from this incredible panel of experts. Thank you.

DR. KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you so much. And finally, Liz.

ELIZABETH CRUZ: Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Liz Cruz and I'm a Senior Advisor of Health & Well-Being and Gender-Responsive Services at the Women's Justice Institute, and soon-to-be, I'm so excited, Director of Programs and Operations. I'm also a Lead Care Coordinator of a major six-year, federally-funded SAMHSA women's reentry grant, which I love to work on with one of the largest health systems in the nation, Cook County Health, as well as Cook County Jail and the Illinois Department of Corrections. So I'm just grateful to use my lived experience and my expertise on the matter to share my story and recommendations with you all today. So I'm so glad to be here. Thank you.

DR. KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you all so much. I'm so excited to learn from you all today and hear your thoughts on how we can support women's reentry. We're going to start with some visual aids and some framing, and then when we get into the larger discussion, I will pull down the PowerPoint. But right now, just to frame the conversation, what we know is that there's a sizable population of women who are experiencing reentry each year. And many face challenges in successfully reintegrating into the community. To that end, we did just publish an article earlier this month that focuses on what we know about women in reentry based on available data and research, which is available on our website. But as we describe in the article Five Things to Know About Women and Reentry, we know that some jurisdictions are utilizing gender and culturally-responsive programming, both of which may enhance reentry success for women. But ultimately, there's less attention paid to women in the system when compared to men. There's a general lack of national level data on women in the system. So, information on their demographic characteristics, offense types, recidivism patterns. And along with that, there are few rigorous evaluations of women's reentry programming. Again, making it difficult to determine what is most effective for this population. Despite that, we do see some promising work being done in correctional institutions, in community supervision agencies, and in service organizations. And so today, I really want to focus the discussion on what's being done in the field and how that may shape future programming and research. And so to start, I'd like to talk about what's being done in our federal prisons to begin preparing for reentry before release. And so my first question is going to be directed toward Karl. Could you please tell us about women that are incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons and how the bureau is utilizing evidence-based practices for women during incarceration and to prepare them for reentry?

KARL LEUKEFELD: Sure, I'd be happy to. Thanks, Kyleigh. I think one of the things that will be good is if we started out with some background information, and there's a slide that's up there. I want to talk a little bit about that and then we'll talk a little bit about some of the evidence-based practices that we're using in the Federal Bureau of Prisons right now. Unlike a lot of the state and local systems, the BOP's women's population has been relatively flat for about the past two and a half decades. So we have not seen a large increase in the women who are in our custody. Right now, we have about 11,600 who are in 27 facilities throughout the agency. So that's about 7% of the BOP population. The women in our custody, the average age is 40, and they are drug offenders with no history of violence. They also don't have public safety factors. And what the Bureau considers a public safety factor are things like someone has a history of violence, someone is a sex offender, things like that. The women that we have are primarily low risk and they're low security. The Bureau doesn't classify women as medium security. We have minimum security, low security, and then there's a very small administrative unit in Carswell, Texas which usually has between eight and ten women in custody there.

The other thing that we're cognizant of with the women in our custody and what the research tells us at NIJ and other folks in the field have, is that about 90% of the women in our custody have experienced some form of trauma, whether that's physical abuse, sexual abuse, intimate partner abuse. So that's the lens in which we deliver our services in the agency. We also — and the Director covered this a little while ago in her introductory remarks — we understand that women have different paths to prison, usually they're co-conspirators. Again, their crimes are nonviolent in nature when they come into our custody. There usually is a poverty element in that. When we're looking at our population, we work from the baseline that women compared to their male counterparts, for the most part, have lower levels of education, lower levels of income, and lower levels of vocational training. So those are some of the areas that we try to target. We also understand that women in the general population usually use healthcare at higher rates than men do. That's especially true with women who are incarcerated because unfortunately, again, many of them have experienced the ramifications and aftereffects of trauma and physical abuse. When there's physical abuse that's involved, there's more healthcare needs that are there. 

We also understand that the majority — and we work from this lens — of women are primary caregivers for minor children. About 55%, 60% of the women in our custody have children under the age of 18. And so I mentioned before, our branch also has oversight of parenting issues and pregnant individuals, which is really helpful in putting together a holistic approach for the women who are in our custody. We also understand the importance that women place on relationships. And that's both while they're in custody and after they're released, also prior to incarceration. So in training our staff, when we get staff to come into work with women, right off the bat, the staff who work with women are required to take management of female offender training and then trauma-informed correctional care training. And what we're doing with that is we're focusing on the communication with women and the staff's communication back and forth with them to make sure that they're using the trauma-informed lens. It's things that we train the staff to do with men, but we're especially cognizant of the needs of women. These are things that are not really all that complicated. It's communicate with people. If you have someone who's a trauma survivor and you're dealing with them and you're working to meet their needs and using that collaborative approach to build a trustful and safe relationships, explain what you're doing. And that's, if you're going to search someone when they come in, tell them what they're doing, tell them what you're doing. 

The other thing that we're working on with that to make our environments less traumatizing with women is making it more home-like. It's interesting because we've done assessments of a lot of our institutions, and one of the things that I like to do is, I usually get the Warden, the Associate Warden, whoever I can drag down to our receiving and discharge area. And when they come in, I say, “Okay. Now let's look at this.” Now if you walked into this area and let's call it a doctor's office, how are we being trauma-informed when we're doing this? When you walk in, is this decreasing the trauma? Is this decreasing the stress on the women that we're bringing into our custody? Do we have plants? Do we have murals? Or is it an austere environment? So that's something that we're looking at doing. We're also working on calming rooms to keep women out of special housing. And to do that, it's, “Hey, it's kind of a timeout.” They go into this voluntarily. It's a room. A lot of the rooms have painted murals, some of them have sound machines. They also have calming music. And it's, “Let's work this out.” We can avoid putting women in the SHU because again, most of the women who are in our custody have a trauma history, a trauma background. And so, looking at how we're meeting their needs and making sure that we're using that lens is something that's going to help make sure that we're managing our facilities and the women in our custody and helping them. 

For years, corrections was not looked at as a helping profession. When I go out and I talk to the folks who work in our institutions and I get to do training with them, I'm really lucky that I get to go do assessments. I say that this is a profession that we got into to help people. There's a large social work, there's a large mental health, there's a large health services component, and there's a large communication component. And this is all, as you all know, backed up by evidence-based research. If we're not using that evidence and we're not targeting these needs, which started with the Second Chance Act, and now the First Step Act have moved us further in that direction. So we are tailoring the needs of these women. Any of you who are familiar with the First Step Act, know that there's 13 needs that we're targeting. And interestingly enough, we've put together programming with those needs. And those needs are things like looking at cognitions, anti-social peers, criminal history, associated trauma needs, work needs. And a lot of those are the things that I mentioned before, for the deficits that women face when they come into incarceration. So when we're using these programs, it's interesting, the Bureau used to have a model where programming was done locally. Now the programming is centralized. There has to be evidence behind it. We have productive activities and evidence-based recidivism reducing programs. So in that catalog, as of last week, there were 105 programs in that catalog. What's interesting is, of those 105 programs, 32% of those programs are gender-responsive, and they target the needs of women. So, I mentioned before, and you can see on the slide, women are 7% of the bureau's population, but they have about 30% of the programming that's there. And again, we're looking at those needs. Are you underemployed? Do you have a trauma history? What are the things that you need to make you successful when you go out and you release because our goal is not to make people who are good inmates, not to make good adults in custody, our goal is to make people good neighbors and good citizens when they leave our institutions. So, Kyleigh, I know I have talked long enough. Do you have any follow-ups on that question or anything else that I can answer?

DR. KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Not at this time, but I appreciate that overview. I think it's really good for us to understand what's happening before people get out of incarceration because the process really does start before and not after. And so, I think it's great to hear all of the things that are going on in the FBOP for women. I would now like to turn it over to Dr. Sam to talk a little bit about what your organization is doing. So my question for you is, “How are community-based organizations like yours working with women after incarceration to help on their reentry journeys?”

DR. TOPEKA K. SAM: Thank you so much. So, specifically for us, The Ladies of Hope Ministries, we are making sure that, again, women's basic human rights are met, access to safe and affordable housing, quality healthcare, an equitable opportunity in a living wage career, entrepreneurship opportunities, and healthy food. And so, what we've done, we started off back in 2017, specifically with Hope House, which is a safe housing space for women and girls to come home from any system of violence, whether it's incarceration, aging out of foster care, actively fleeing domestic violence. When we started that, we scaled that to New Orleans, Louisiana because at the time, Louisiana was the number one state that was incarcerating people anywhere in the world, and it was COVID. And when women were unable to be released from prison because there was no housing for women coming home, so then we had Hope House in New Orleans. Then we moved over to Prince George's County, Maryland. And we were looking at the state of Maryland and looking specifically for the opportunities and where there were gaps in housing. Prince George's County had a large number of people coming back from prison into that county. Yet again, not enough housing opportunities. 

As we begin to build out that program, which is with our HOPE scale model, H for hope and healing, O for opportunity, optimism, P for power, potential, E for empowerment and exit. We provide different programming through that, which is also trauma-informed care and which is led by women who have been directly affected by the system. But what we realized was once in Hope House, women still needed permanent housing that they were able to stay with us to up to 18 months. We have a savings contribution plan, where they give no more than 30% of their income, not to exceed $300, and 50% of that, we save for them for when they come home when they're ready to move on with their journey. We give them 50% of their savings back. But the problem was we were unable to find landlords and others who would actually rent to women because of their conviction history, because of their credit, because they didn't have the income in order to qualify for an apartment home on their own. As we started looking at what other ways that we can help to impact for permanent supportive housing, we began to partner with HUD and work on rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing. So the model that we've created with the rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing is that we will pay for their housing for the first three months. After the first three months, we step down. So it's 75%, 50%, 25% for the first year. And again, the difference, because we are able to pay their rent for up to a year, we save that again for a savings contribution for when they leave. Now the goal through this program is to get women into becoming homeowners, because that also allows for true sustainability, true freedom, generational wealth, and really breaking these chains through the trauma. So that's our housing model and what we're doing. 

We're also doing the housing in those states, again, New York, New Orleans, Louisiana, Prince George's County, Maryland. We're scaling this year to Miami, Florida, and Detroit, Michigan where I actually have first just partnered with three other women. And we purchased our first commercial property where it's 30 units of affordable housing in the city of Detroit, 15 of which we're going to make sure that formerly incarcerated women and women who are impacted by systems of violence have access to those 15 units. So really excited about that. We will be preleasing next month for that. A full rehab should be completed in another two weeks. 

And then when we move on to our workforce development work. Again, what we saw was these gaps. And what we try to do is fill gaps and not replicate what people are doing. For the gaps that we found, we found that there were digital skills that people were lacking. Not understanding what different industries that they can go in. While social work and human services is an industry that actually welcomes people with convictions, it doesn't mean that that's the only industry that you need to look into when you come home from prison. So we've had an ability to partner with a lot of corporations to be able to provide truly growth-focused job opportunities. And Marta will talk a little bit about her experiences through the Pathways for Equity Program here shortly. But we've also partnered with Google. We were one of the four founding organizations that created the digital skills training for justice impacted people. And to date throughout all of the organizations that have partnered with launching that program over 100,000 directly affected people, justice impacted people have gone through the program and have been certified. We've also partnered with IBM and Microsoft as well to make sure that we're giving new opportunities in different industries like cyber security, AI, and other industries that actually are friendly to people with convictions, do not discriminate based on education, and certifications are offered online and digitally. So really excited about that. 

Also, offering our programs in both English and Spanish because what we've noticed in different areas of the country you have a large Spanish speaking community, which not only is affected by incarceration, immigration detention, and these same systems. I'm so excited to be able to launch that in person facilitated led classes in Miami. We've been just taking the approach we have to give people what they need. 

We also do partner with organizations to make sure that people have access to mental health services because it's important. But part of our mental health and our wellness also goes with where do we live? How are we getting access to healthy food? Where are we going to work? What type of educational opportunities can I have that I'm not going to be discriminated against? People are coming home from prison each and every day. And while we are talking about the Federal Bureau of Prisons, largely the number of people who are incarcerated are in state and local facilities around the country. And when they come home, they're actually looking specifically for what can I do next? No one wants to be in prison. When I find that people end up going back, it was because of lack of opportunities they had to stay home. And so just as an example, recently a sister just did 16 years of incarceration, came home to Virginia, was offered a job, was very excited in our digital skills training program, shared her offer letter, and started work. She disclosed her conviction before she was hired actually at the interview, and they extended the offer. Her background check came back. She received a text message stating that they could no longer go forward with her employment based on her conviction history. They put it in the letter. And so, we've been working now to file an EEO claim and do these different things. It just happened Friday. But the fact that she got the offer extended, started working the job, disclosed which she had been convicted of prior to her starting the job and yet still, you do a background check, it comes back and the HR professional at that particular company decided that what the conviction was, was not worthy for her to do a peer specialist job with people who were in recovery, which is directly aligned really with people who've been through incarceration. 

So it's these fights that women, and as Karl mentioned being primary caregivers of dependent children, and all the things that women are facing each and every day. The lack of opportunity is where we continue to fill those gaps and make sure that women can feel safe and that they know that they can feel empowered to do other things other than just what people are really just giving us. It has been really exciting to see some of the strides that we've been able to work on and through as an organization. The success stories that we have, Marta being one of them. Zero percent recidivism through anyone who's gone through our programs that we've impacted over 5,000 women and girls to date in 34 states and the Caribbean. It's exciting because we are a directly affected organization, 85% of the staff has been impacted by many of these systems. And we begin to continue to lead that work and then also hire women to work with our organization that actually have been through our programs as well. There are many other organizations out here around the country that are focusing on making sure that women and girls have access to their needs when they come home because they are local organizations. We happen to be a national organization. But I think that when systems are really looking to impact women who are coming home that it's important that they're being connected to communities like The Ladies of Hope Ministries that can embrace them, that they can feel comfortable and confident with sharing some of the experiences and traumas that they've been through. And knowing that, we have a specific level of expertise that we can share because we all are also the model that we've created. Through this organization, I've been incredibly blessed. I have not gone back to prison, have not gotten into any issues since coming home and continue to build and grow. Because of that, I was able to receive a full pardon from the President in recognition of the work that we do with The Ladies of Hope Ministries and the work that I've done across the country on a lot of different legislation in order to make sure that women's conditions of confinement are more humane. And that we also worked on the First Step Act and just really excited to have had that opportunity to make sure that the provisions were put into that legislation for women specifically. Thank you.

KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you so much. It's so great to hear about all the work that you're doing in the community. And I'll say that the chat and the audience is very, very excited about what you're doing as well. I've seen a lot of hearts and hand claps and way to gos, so that's wonderful.

DR. TOPEKA K. SAM: Thank you. Thank you so much.

KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: I'll turn it over to Deanne now.

DEANNE BENOS: Well, gosh, no one ever wants to go after Dr. Sam ever, but I remain super energized every time I have the privilege to share space with you, Topeka. So thank you for that and all that you've been doing to…

DR. TOPEKA K. SAM: I love you. Thank you, Deanne.

DEANNE BENOS: I just don't love you when I have to go after you. That's all. But kidding. So as mentioned, I'm the Co-Founder and Director of the Women's Justice Institute. And a little bit about us. I have a few more slides. We're a little slide heavy at the WJI, but I hope that everyone can bear with me on that. Who we are. We are Chicago-based, but national. We call ourselves a think and do tank because the origins of our work are really developing models for systems, meaning any system across the justice continuum whether it’s social services, pretrial, jails, prison, parole, across the board. We started our work really looking at design and looking at policy and practice to make sure women are seen. We are using research and lived experience to really dictate transformation in those spaces. But over time, that work evolved into incubating and service delivery in Chicago, the home base of our organization. And similar to Topeka's organization — although Topeka is the founder, which is incredible — 85% of our team are formerly incarcerated leaders that are not only experts that are leading technical assistance across the country, but also leading service delivery of programming. 

Our work focuses on the three goals I mentioned. We want to end women's mass incarceration through innovative and cutting-edge data collection and strategies to reduce population. We develop harm reduction measures caused by lack of gender responsive policies, practices, procedures, and programs. And I know people have different definitions of what that means. We look at that as holistic trauma-informed, family centered, culturally responsive. It's sometimes evidence-based, but that's a challenge with the research issue that we've discussed. Then also our third goal is to improve health, well-being, and outcomes among women, their children, families, and communities. Our model that we use to incubate our work is the WJI's Women's Justice Pathways Model. And due to time, I'm not going to obviously spend a lot of time on this because we have some really important speakers here behind me. But I just want to say that what we've been doing at WJI is we've tried to redefine how we use the word justice when we think about service delivery and engagements with and for women. So instead of justice being someone going to prison or being arrested or not, we're looking at justice as access to what we call rights and needs. So shifting the risk paradigm to rights. We see rights as relationship safety health and well-being, safe and stable housing, economic security, empowerment, and supportive families. We see women's agency and reclamation in all those areas. The way that we define our work and we deliver and design our programs is by saying that access to justice is when women's rights are met and that's a pathway to justice. And pathway to prison when women experience social and economic marginalization is a lack of these things. 

We've heard quite a bit about some of the data here today, so I will not regale everyone with a recap of the wonderful data shared here that's out there, which is wonderful, extensive data is out there in key areas that we do know about. But we do know that women suffer. It's just across the board with regards to relationship safety. And this is a quick note, another key part when we're building programs and we're talking about re-entry or no entry with women, is that we see women that have a criminal record as different from women in society. And a lot of the research just focuses on that subset as if we're not looking at women as a whole and women that have rights and needs across the board. I think that our organization embraces the concept that othering women that are in the systems sometimes creates an ideology or a disruption in quality programs and services that they deserve as “other than.” And so we want to look at women as a whole and acknowledge that across the board whether a woman's been to prison or not, she most likely has experienced gender-based violence at a higher rate than men. Women experience health and well-being issues differently. Women have higher rates of homelessness. They have lower economic opportunity and a higher percentage of women are single parents just in society as a whole. But when you compound those issues with women that experience the justice system in response to those issues, you start to see even greater disparities and challenges that are presented that need to be addressed to have a successful re-entry program. 

So when we look at these issues, when you look at health and well-being, something that I know folks are very familiar with because we talked a lot about the war on drugs, when we're looking at the fact that if someone doesn't have access to healthcare, treatment resources, particularly for drugs. We see drugs and mental health criminalized. That is a pathway to prison. But if we're intervening earlier and we're treating these with services that are effective, that's a pathway to justice. Through our work in our program, we look at these issues as all interrelated. So if a woman begins her trajectory through the justice system, through trauma due to gender-based violence like so many women do. Ninety-eight percent of women in Illinois prisons have experienced some form of abuse, gender-based violence in their lifetime before prison for example. That could set off a trajectory into substance use or trauma that then triggers a criminal record and then destabilizes housing with a background check or lack of a job, or inability to take care of her children and feeds a vicious cycle. The way we look at this is all these issues intertwine in the circle on your right, almost like a spiral and runs through eight impact points. Each of them is an opportunity whether it starts early or towards the end, pushes her into an opportunity to justice and a way for systems or in the entrenchment. When we think about program considerations, when we do our work, we really try to center it all on not what a system gives women, but how women experience the system. We don't have enough accountability on systems and how they're engaging versus how people are truly experiencing them. A lot of our work needs to be and therefore is cross-sector. 

We also, through our team, do a lot of work to reclaim narratives. There's a lot of narratives when you think service delivery and re-entry. Who can get out early? Who can access that pre-release program in prison? A lot of times all these ancillary narratives that are deeply gendered that cause, I think, without the proper training we’re denying women resources or we’re denying her access to dignified services in the community. Things like, “Oh, we had to re-incarcerate her because she was pregnant for the safety of the baby.” But why is she getting a technical violation as opposed to a community service? A violent woman versus criminalized survivor. We know women are disproportionately impacted and killed in gender-based violence, abusive relationships. And we do know that we have a high number of women that are in prison related to those relationships, self-defense or coercion, or other things and denying them access to services that will aid their re-entry. So we're confronting these narratives and trainings, and other things in our models. 

As mentioned, these are the five areas and each of them are rooted in leaders on our team and through our engagements that are leading what reclamation looks like in each of these areas and in our programs. The way that translates, briefly, a lot of our work and our research has led us to mutual support, which is impacted leaders supporting impacted leaders. We have a reclamation center in Chicago that we're looking to expand nationally, and we have some publications coming out in the next several months about the concept of peer support in this kind of setting and the use of a circle process that's adapted toward reclamation of life, of people's lives in different areas using the pathways model as opposed to the importance of basic needs and dignity in that process. 

A huge part when you're looking at re-entry is we segment, we say, “Oh, this is the prison person. This is the parole person. This is the social service provider.” And the woman is invisible in-between. Also, her needs are not being met. They're being met, but in a more than slightly coercive way when she's under the thumb of a system. But if you bring together impacted leaders with their true voice, where they're speaking, we're using the center as a place where there can be training with and alongside systems partners like probation and parole, jails, and prisons that come to our center for gender-responsive retreats or training programs together. That's both locally and nationally. From a local perspective in our programing, it's done wonders for our work and Elizabeth Cruz on our team will share that. 

And then lastly, freedom. We really focus a lot of our work on freedom. When you work with women in re-entry, re-entry to us isn't just the day she lands in prison or gets out of prison. Re-entry can be a lifelong process, sadly, because of some of the barriers and collateral consequences we put in the way. It's really critical to be looking early on, as some of the other panelists have clearly said to look at re-entry decarceration as soon as possible and making sure people have a soft landing with people in the supportive network. And then we focus on families. I'm going to skip this for everyone today, but staying connected to families, we have a Reunification Ride where we bring women together with their children because often prisons are far from home. And those disconnections harm both the woman, the child, and the family and it's a critical part of re-entry in the process of coming home. Of course our work focuses on engaging women well before they're released and we engage them as partners in their expertise throughout all of our work as some of our tips at the beginning. And any questions we will share later, but that's an email address ([email protected]). Thanks a lot.

DR. KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you so much. So again, great to hear everything that you're doing in the community and to see all these visuals and the pictures, and everything is really impactful. Next I'm going to turn it over to Marta and Liz for the same question. I'm going to start with Liz, though. So, Liz, based on your experience in this work, what do you see as the biggest challenges facing women and what was helpful for your success in your re-entry journey?

ELIZABETH CRUZ: Sure. Thank you so much. I appreciate you and thank you for allowing me to share today. I just appreciate it. So happy to be here with you all. And just to answer your question about women's greatest re-entry challenges and how that correlates with my own lived experience, I want to first refer back to the WJI Women's Justice Pathways Model that, Deanne, you shared earlier. That WJP model is not just a piece of paper, it is the foundation and the roots of all of our work, technical assistance, and programming at the WJI. And it was created with the counsel of hundreds of my sisters, on both sides of the wall, so currently incarcerated, formerly incarcerated. When I look at this wheel, it's a reminder of my own pathways in and out of systems, and a guide for serving the women on my caseloads today and throughout all of our programs at the WJI. When I look at this slide, I not only see my own pathway to and from incarceration, but one from my own success and reclamation. Like so many women, while my entry point was based on one of the rights and needs, it rippled across all of them at one point or another. 

My story begins with having homelessness at the forefront. And me and my mother were couch surfing at the age of 3, living with neighbors and strangers. This exposed me to incredible vulnerabilities that deeply undermined my relationship safety. And that's truly where it all began. The abuse I endured in and out of unsafe homes led me early to deep-rooted trauma that neither I nor my mother could name. You know, back in those days, it was, “Don't tell, don't say anything.” And it went unaddressed and it came out in coping behaviors, acting out, and ultimately substance use and addiction, and that all goes along with it. Thankfully today, I'm currently sober for over two decades, so I'm really thankful for that. But the thing is, that even at a young age, I was seen and treated as a bad kid, the outcast. Because drugs were bad and no one stopped to say like, “What happened to you?” What happened to me was horrible and no one stopped to even ask what was going on, why was I acting the way that I did. And no one was held accountable. But they wanted to hold me accountable when I went to prison. Ultimately, I was incarcerated 20 years ago, actually April 17th, 2004. So this panel is somewhat of a 20-year anniversary of my release. The judge told me back then, you can go get treatment in prison, as opposed to allowing me to do treatment in the community and getting well. That said, I worked really hard, learned a lot, and was fortunate to finally connect with quality services that helped me change my life. But to be honest, I was the exception, not the rule. There are a lot of services out there, but there are a few that women can relate to. They're not always a trusting environment or a safe place with dignity. Although they helped me be successful, I still felt like I was missing something. 

At this point, upon my release, I started to try to turn my life around, but soon found myself struggling as a single mom, unemployed due to my criminal background. I got denied jobs. I got walked out of jobs because of my background, even though I was honest about my background. And then the ugly side of gender-based violence, I continued that cycle upon release. But finding the right people to help you can get you on the right path. It really, really can. I am appreciative of a few mentors that guided me along the way. Over a decade after my release, in 2016 I began stable employment and helping others and earn my master's degree in forensic psychology. You can say since then, which was a very long road, I turned all those deficits in my women's justice pathways into forms of reclamation. I find so much healing today in my work with WJI supporting other women as part of the CCH Women's Reentry Initiative. I feel like a part of me heals every time I work with women. I feel like a part of me really heals every time I'm able to help someone just like me. A central reminder to this is much of what we do at WJI is what others miss. We focus on how important dignity and basic needs are. It's so critical that we look at those two areas in-between the transactions of all the services we provide women. We cannot forget these two issues, which are core. For the CCH Women's Reentry Initiative, we have built a gender responsive reentry and care coordination model that is not only rooted in research but is led entirely by women with lived experience. It's also important to note that our CCHDR Women's Reentry Model is supported by some cutting-edge work we are doing in Chicago through the Reclamation Center. 

In conclusion, we need to remind practitioners and researchers that best practices for the field that many women have had their dignity stripped off them well before incarceration, during and after, and they carry the stigma. It's only worse when they are struggling to keep up with parole requirements, treatment schedules, finding housing, securing employment, or unifying with children. Sometimes they can't even afford basic soap or professional clothing, and they can't even afford a bus ride to come to our appointments. So I leave you with the services must be holistic, grants and research must be holistic. And we must see women when we are designing programs, particularly women on both sides of the wall. Thank you for that question. I appreciate it.

KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you so much. And I really appreciate you pointing to what can be done in the future and where future research can go in this space. And Marta, I'd like to turn to you now with the same question. So based on your experience, what are the biggest challenges facing women and what was helpful to ensure your success?

MARTA BARRETO: Thank you. I want to thank you for having me here. It's such an honor to be able to speak about this and it's such a heavy and important subject for me. I want to say first and foremost for as long as I can remember being sex trafficked and sexually abused, I was never seen as anyone that mattered, a woman, a mother, a daughter, a sister. I think it's very important to bring up that when we come out after being incarcerated, that there's a gap in programs for women that have been abused or experienced some kind of trauma. The programs are few and far between. It seems to me, if there are any programs, they're just little band-aids. The women's rights or trauma are not as dignified or noticed as important. There's a lot of programs that lack substance as far as helping women find housing, helping women feel like they're of value. It's really important to remember that we are not only women, we're mothers. For example, I have a teenage daughter. When I came out, me not being able to get a job, me not being able to find programs that help me or saw me when I first came out was really hard on her. And that causes trauma for our children and our children start having anxiety and they're wondering if we're going to ever get to get a job, if my mom's going to be okay, if my mom's ever going to be able to provide for me. My daughter was afraid of asking me for a pair of shoes. My daughter was afraid even to ask me for a dollar because she saw my struggle. A lot of programs are out there, but they're not long enough, if you allow me to explain. 

When women come out, I think that we need programs that are more substance filled, meaning, a year-long programs, or six-month long programs that can get us on our feet, that can guide us through the uncertainties of society because society looks at us differently as women when we come out and we are formerly incarcerated. It's hard for us to get a job. It's hard for us to be seen as human beings. So that was really hard for me. I also want to express that before we think about making the programs better out here, we also need to think about making the programs better in prison. In prison, a lot of women are consistently being abused, consistently being raped, consistently going through trauma. For example, the SB 132 that's taking place in California right now, where women are being traumatized by this bill. Women are not seen as women in prison. There's the lack of rehabilitation programs in there, lack of programs to make women grow and heal. And I think that we also need to consider that as well. 

For me, what helped me was The Ladies of Hope Ministries. The Ladies of Hope Ministries and Dr. Topeka Sam helped me out a lot. They were a program that saw me through the eyes of Christ. They enabled me to see that I was a woman of value, someone that was important. Dr. Topeka Sam helped me navigate my uncertainty, helped me believe myself, helped me get into therapy, and she also encouraged me to fight to overcome my own insecurities. And to start it, she enabled me to see that I had value. That I mattered, that I deserved to be in a CEO position at a corporation, or I deserved to have a job that made $80,000 or $100,000 a year, that I deserved and should go back to school and get a degree. And through Topeka Sam and Lady of Hope Ministries, I was involved in the Pathways 4 Equity cohort. And they really talk to you about what you're going through. They really look through the lens of your trauma. They walk you through it. They help you gain more confidence in yourself. They help you begin to heal. They help you begin to essentially lift your head and be able to look in that reflection and see that you are someone worth value. And Topeka Sam, she does such amazing work. And what she did was be able to get me to get hired at Virgin Orbit. My dream has always been to work in aerospace. And when I came out of prison, I always thought that I was never going to be able to touch that dream. I thought it was gone. Lady of Hope Ministries and Topeka Sam truly showed me otherwise. She showed me that I could and I should apply for that job. And through her program, Pathways 4 Equity, I was able to do so. I got hired as a propulsion technician. It was the greatest job I've ever had in my life. It empowered me to believe in myself in ways I never thought. 

She also led me to go into therapy for three years straight, which helped me, for the first time in my life, let go of that trauma, let go of the shame, let go of the hurt, the unforgiveness of myself and what I've been through. I began to experience some sense of freedom. And with that freedom, I began to grow as a woman. Well, I was able to look in the mirror and actually say, “You know what, Marta? You are of value. You do deserve to be here. You do deserve a second chance. You do deserve to heal.” Through that healing, because of Lady of Hope Ministries and that job that I was able to get at Virgin Orbit, in the background, my daughter was healing. Her anxiety began to dissipate. She began to become more confident in herself. She started asking me to buy her shoes and shirts and all sorts of things because she knew that I was in a stable position. I was in a stable place of employment and now that she could rely on me. As well as me going through therapy, she also saw her mom heal. Her mom didn't look down anymore. Her mom didn't walk around and sulk. Her mom was more confident and started acting as such. You could see myself accentuate who I was because of Lady of Hope Ministries. Topeka Sam saved my life. Topeka Sam gave me a second chance, showed me that I mattered. Lady of Hope Ministries and Dr. Topeka Sam, truly engraved in me to never give up, to truly fight for my freedom, to fight for healing, to fight to be the person that I was. 

Today, I'm no longer in Virgin Orbit because Virgin Orbit went under. But now I'm at a different company. I'm a Process Engineering Technician, and I'm consistently excelling. I have a job that I make pretty good money, but most importantly, I'm able to provide for my daughter, I'm able to provide for myself. And all those years that I missed, I missed a lot on my daughter's childhood. I missed a lot of things. I was able to not miss out on being able to provide for her a car, her first car. I was able to buy her first car. And the only reason I was able to buy her first car was because of Lady of Hope Ministries and Dr. Topeka Sam, and the program that she provides for all of us. I wish she would come to California and set this place on fire. Because for the first time in my life, and I've been incarcerated a couple times, the Lady of Hope Ministries allowed me to see that I mattered and that I shouldn't settle for less. And that even though I made the mistake, I wasn't a mistake and that I deserve to heal and that I shouldn't hold my head down but hold it up because I am a survivor. I think it's so valuable that Lady of Hope Ministries instills that in us. There should be more programs like that. I really just want to reiterate one last time. I think we need to hear women. We have a voice and we matter. Women that go to prison because they made mistakes shouldn't have to continue to be abused. And it only re-traumatizes us. And when we come out, it makes us different. It makes it difficult to get back into society and believe in ourselves. I think that needs to be addressed.

KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: Thank you so much, Marta, for those words. And just reiterating that you do matter and I'm so happy that you're here with us today and can give us that perspective.

MARTA BARRETO: Thank you.

KYLEIGH CLARK-MOORMAN: I know that we are a little bit after time. The conversation was extremely robust. I admittedly had more questions, but I'm so glad that we could cover what we did. Just to end with a summation of things that maybe could be looked at going forward. Some things that the panelists touched on today, just talking about filling gaps in the system rather than replicating programs. Talking about the length of programs, so looking at lengthening programs and getting better programming both in and out of prison and jail and community supervision. And having these holistic strategies in order to really help women on their reentry journeys, also things like peer support. We've heard from a couple impacted women today who are showing us the importance of support and having support from other impacted women, and then also how to address stigma. I just really want to thank everyone for joining us today in having this robust conversation. I encourage everyone to go on and learn more about the work that's being done. That will conclude our webinar for today. Thank you everyone for attending and for participating.