The Scarlet Letter of Incarceration: Barriers to Women’s Re-entry

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The Scarlet Letter of Incarceration: Barriers to Women's Re-entry
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Women are the fastest growing prison population worldwide and there are over 1.9 million individuals leaving women’s prisons and jails every year in the United States. This process of going back into the community—of reuniting with family, finding housing, securing a job—is known as “re-entry.”

In this episode of Columbia Race Talks we ask: what does the reentry experience actually look like? Three formerly incarcerated women share their stories. We hear from Harmony Hope from WBAI Radio’s On the Count; DeAnna Hoskins, former Department of Justice Senior Policy Advisor and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA; and Vivian Nixon, Writer in Residence at the Square One Project at Columbia Justice Lab.

All three women have personally experienced coming home, rebuilding, and ultimately thriving professionally. Today, they are leaders in the re-entry field, but behind their success are quiet stories of pain and perseverance and stories of life after incarceration that often go untold.

In this episode, we learn what it means to re-enter society and to reclaim freedom even decades after the bars are gone.

Vivian Nixon

Writer in Residence at the Square One Project and former Executive Director of the College and Community Fellowship

DeAnna Hoskins

CEO of JustLeadershipUSA and former Department of Justice Senior Policy Advisor


Harmony Hope

Advocate and Senior Producer and Host of WBAI Radio’s On the Count

“There is an internal Journey. There is an emotional journey. One has to release the shame of having been incarcerated. There is still a tremendous amount of stigma attached to being incarcerated, in particular for women.”

“I don’t feel that you’re ever done with re-entry.”

TRANSCRIPT

CREDITS

Production

Main Feature written, edited and produced by Shira Flugelman, Jessica Gadea Hawkins and Ailee Katz.
Mini Feature written, edited and produced by Shira Flugelman, Jessica Gadea Hawkins.

Sound Clips

President Barack Obama, “President Obama Addresses the NAACP’s 106th National Convention” (2015).
President Joe Biden, “The Biden Plan for Strengthening America’s Comitment to Justice”, (2019).
Protest, “No Justice No Peace”, Internet Archive (2020).

References

Derecka Purnell, “Making the Argument for Abolishing the Police” The Daily Show (2021).
Correctional Association of New York, “It Reminds Us How We Got Here: (Re)Producing Abuse, Neglect, and Trauma in New York’s Prisons for Women”, (2020)(See report for qualitative research on trauma and incarceration in women’s prisons).
Vivian Nixon, Yolanda Johnson Peterkin, et al, “Life Capacity Beyond Reentry: A Critical Examination of Racism and Prisoner Reentry Reform in the U.S.”, 2 R./E. Mult. Glob. Cont. 1, 21-43 (2008) (Referencing the term “Reetry Mania”).
Wendy Sawyer, “Who’s helping the 1.9 million women released from prisons and jails each year?” Prison Policy Initiative (2019) (Based on 2016 Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1.9 million women leave prisons and jails every year, 81,000 from state prisons).