Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

Our Vision

There are tens of millions of people in the United States suffering the collateral consequences of a felony conviction. We are people who have been charged, convicted and branded with an arrest and conviction history.

Birth Behind Bars A proposed law would ban the use of shackles on pregnant inmates

The bill is here.

ColorLines covers the growing movement to get this bill passed here.

Originally appeared in Real Health

A WORTHwhile Cause

By Robin Urevich

In California, many prisoners who are released from jails and prisons can’t go home to parents or spouses because of rules that bar ex-offenders from living in public or subsidized housing.

But those zero tolerance policies may be changing – at least in Los Angeles where the city housing authority has approved what is likely the first pilot program in the state aimed at reuniting ex-offenders and their families who live in Section 8 housing.

“We don’t want to consign people to homelessness and recidivism,” said Peter Lynn, who directs the Section 8 program at

In a move that will drastically redefine incarceration in California, prison officials are about to start releasing more than 4000 of the roughly 9500 female inmates in state facilities who have children, to allow them to serve the remainder of their sentences at home. The move will help California meet a U.S. Supreme Court-imposed deadline to make space in the state's chronically overcrowded prisons. In May, the state lost a U.S.

A friend sent this to me over the weekend. The report is UK-based and a few years old, but the information is (sadly) still valid today.

The pdf can be read here: http://prisonercorrespondenceproject.com/QFT_prison_abolition_full.pdf

Political Prisoner, Lynne Stewart, was interviewed by mail by Patricia Vickers, a founding member of the Human Rights Coalition (HRC) of Pennsylvania. Below is an excerpt from the interview:

Human Rights Coalition: What are some of the human rights violations that you see happening in the U.S. today that we, the people, need to eliminate?

Lynne Stewart: The most egregious and obvious violations are occurring in the prison system.

Katherine Telemachos is currently serving a life sentence at Broward Correctional Institution, and is terminally ill. We are seeking a conditional medical release from the parole board and we are certain that once you read her story, you will want to help us in making this happen.

Katherine has had a very hard life. Originally from South Florida, she was born with a terminal liver disease and in 1981 she became the youngest girl in the US to receive an experimental liver transplant at the age of 10 years old.

Katherine’s health remained stable for a few years.

USA TODAY US Edition
The Associated Press Contributing: Brian Haas of The Tennessean in Nashville

from The Wall Street Journal on-line:

NY court reinstates prison sex abuse suit
AUGUST 22, 2011