'We're a community': These groups are working to bail out incarcerated women in time for Mother's Day

The Headfort Foundation provides free legal services to people who are unlawfully incarcerated in Nigeria. They reach those in need of help through phone calls, submissions on their mobile app, and visiting courthouses.

The Carmelite Prisoners’ Interest Organization works to release people unlawfully detained in Nigeria. At the same time, the organization provides legal representation and religious support to those awaiting trial.

Coaches from Northern Illinois University's Project FLEX program facilitate sports matches at youth prisons a few times a week to improve recidivism rates. During huddles, the coaches combine sports with psychology-based lessons to emphasize positive skills and strengths.

In Kansas, Douglas County jail reduced the number of incarcerated people with serious mental illness with a suite of practices including connecting them to mental health workers, providing rides, and helping them prepare for life outside of jail.

The California law firm UnCommon Law is helping people in prison make parole through group counseling and training. The firm facilitates conversations around insight, helping participants understand and explain their own personal journey and reckon with the impact of their actions, so that they can convey this to their parole board. Since 2006, UnCommon law has helped 248 men and women receive parole, a 60% success rate.

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.

California is taking a new approach to reducing recidivism, known as The California Model, by providing people who are incarcerated with rehabilitative and educational programming.

In 2017, a Pennsylvania county court system began to expand its offerings of free legal support, and now in 2023 the county provides defendants with public defenders at all arraignments 9am to midnight. In the first two years of its more-limited services, a study proved defendants with lawyers were more likely to be released without cash bail. Also, chances that a defendant would be in jail three days after their hearing dropped. Research also showed, however, increases in some costs and one type of crime.

The Prisoner Correspondence Project connects LGBTQ2S+ people who are incarcerated in the United States and Canada with pen pals who are not incarcerated. The consistent communication helps combat isolation and improve mental health and rehabilitation outcomes.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund is a nonprofit that covers bail payments for people who are jailed and cannot afford bail while awaiting trial.