This rural N.C. farm helps formerly incarcerated women build back their lives, careers

A Rotary club in Topeka, Kansas, has transformed reentry support for incarcerated women at the Shawnee County Jail through Intersection to Care, a program that pairs immediate-release support with mentorship, skills classes, and subsidized housing. The program, led by women with lived experience of incarceration, meets women at the jail exit to prevent trafficking, connects them to recovery housing through Oxford House of Kansas, and offers technology, health, art, and movement classes inside the facility. Since launching in 2022, the initiative has assisted more than 1,000 women.

A project in the Bronx led by two formerly incarcerated women is testing whether transitional living/supportive housing meant specifically for women can help protect against recidivism. The Hope House currently provides homes for 5 women, emphasizing the need for community, not just fulfillment of basic necessities.

Connecticut is attempting to reduce prison recidivism by changing parole practices. Changes to the system are allowing parole officers to foster relationships with parolees and counsel them as people, not as cases.

The Fulton Community Supervision Center in Missouri provides trauma-informed, gender-specific care and services to women who face the risk of recidivism. Participants live at the center, where they receive services like cognitive behavioral therapy and classes that teach coping mechanisms and personal and professional development. Core to much of the programming is helping women find their self worth.

In order to counter terrorism and reduce recidivism of incarcerated male jihadists', the Entrepreneurship and Proselytization Empowerment Program helps the wives of jailed extremists through counseling and lessons about entrepreneurship. The program can help these families stay afloat and decrease the appeal of extremism for their husbands upon release.

Mercy Hospice in Philadelphia is a recovery home that serves homeless women and their children. Their comprehensive approach provides addiction services, as well as mental health and trauma support; the home is seen as a "stepping stone to long-term recovery" and almost half of the women move on to independent housing when they leave the program.

In New Orleans, the organization Woman With A Vision has been advocating for and supporting woman of color who have been involved with the justice system. They have worked to decriminalize sex work and created their own diversion program after realizing the racial bias of the district attorney's program - 80 women have completed the program so far, with more to come.

In the United States, the incarcerated feel like they have no voices and their mistakes that led them to jail go unacknowledged. A documentary film spotlights the IF Project, a writing program that encourages female inmates and recently released felons to write down what they would have done to change the path they went on. With police and teachers as mentors, the convicted have support transitioning into society and can reflect on what they can do to change their lives for the better.

For 20 years, the Center for Young Women’s Development has been a safe space for thousands of young women ages 16 to 24 who have been incarcerated or are homeless in the San Francisco Bay Area. The center is most recognized for its strategies to give these women opportunities for personal and professional growth.

A Department of Justice study reported that about 75 percent of those released in 2005 were rearrested, and women prisoners often have a harder time re-entering society after release. A New Way of Life (ANWOL) is a Los Angeles transitional living facility that has helped more than 750 women stay out of prison by offering housing, case management, mental health and substance treatment, and job training.