Giving Compass' Take:

• Wendy Sawyer explains programs that support women's needs after they are released from prison are emerging. When women leave prison, they need to face issues such as economic development, trauma, and family reunification.

• Where can donors support women's release programs? How can organizations make an impact on the systems level? 

• Read about how women who are leaving prison are finding purpose.

Given the dramatic growth of women’s incarceration in recent years, it’s concerning how little attention and how few resources have been directed to meeting the reentry needs of justice-involved women. After all, we know that women have different pathways to incarceration than men, and distinct needs, including the treatment of past trauma and substance use disorders, and more broadly, escaping poverty and meeting the needs of their children and families.

In recognition of these differences, and in an effort to reduce the harms of incarceration and the likelihood of re-incarceration, many prison systems have begun to implement gender-responsive policies and programs. But what’s being done to help women get the support they need to rebuild their lives after release?

A handful of programs have sprung up in communities around the country to meet the needs of women returning home: some founded by formerly incarcerated women themselves, some running on shoestring budgets for years, and all underscoring the need for greater capacity to meet the demand of over 81,000 releases from prison and 1.8 million releases from jail each year.

As in other stages of the criminal justice system, most post-release policies and programs were created with the much larger male population in mind. But research makes clear that women returning home have “a significantly higher need for services than men,” and that reentry supports should be responsive to the particular needs of justice-involved women:

  • Economic marginalization and poverty
  • Housing
  • Trauma and gendered pathways to incarceration
  • Family reunification

Read the full article about women's reentry programs by Wendy Sawyer at Prison Policy Initiative.