A day without women.
Today is International Women’s Day, and as we witness the strike that is taking place across the world, we must consciously ask ourselves what life would be like without the presence of women in our lives. Mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, coworkers. How would our lives change if the women in them were removed for more than a single day?
The Women’s Prison Association (WPA) has been serving communities that face this very issue for over 170 years. Founded in New York City in 1845, WPA was the nation’s first organization dedicated solely to working with criminal justice-involved women and their families.
WPA helps families and communities manage the trauma of having women providers, caregivers, and valuable contributors removed from their everyday lives as a result of arrest and incarceration. More than 2.7 million children in the U.S. (or 1 in 28) have an incarcerated parent. The effects of incarceration on families are tremendous. WPA endeavors to keep families together by promoting alternatives to incarceration. Clients are often able to serve their sentences within the communities in which they reside. In addition to keeping their families together, this allows clients to build support networks in their own communities, and to address the very circumstances that led to their crimes, thereby increasing their chances of successful transition from criminal activity.
To achieve criminal justice reform, laws, policies, behaviors, and cultural norms must be radically altered. They may only be altered when each of us confronts these questions: What would your life be like without your own mother, or sister? What would life be like without people advocating for change, and growth, and equality? Is it more important to punish those in our community who break the law, at any cost? Or should we consider what it means to alienate them from their families and communities? Should the circumstances ever be considered when a crime is committed?
Fledgling alternatives to incarceration like those at WPA need support from local and state agencies, as well as the general public. It is on this day of mindfulness that I am thrilled to introduce our new platform, Justice Talk, where we, passionate advocates for criminal justice reform, hope to explore many of these questions. Questions that many women face, yet affect us all.
“We’re thrilled to launch this blog on International Women’s Day, a day when the voices of women are honored for their validity, reason, and power to create change.” — Georgia Lerner, WPA’s Executive Director.
As you consider these questions for yourself, consider empathy for those experiencing separation for months, or years at a time and how you can contribute to ending mass incarceration. Facing these issues is the only way we can create change together.
Learn more about WPA, and get involved!
Leah McLaughlin is the Communications Co-Chair for the Women’s Prison Association’s junior board of directors, the Emerging Philanthropists.
