Shedding light on the crisis of women behind bars

Hope and Healing

Whenever and wherever possible, the Women Behind Bars (WBB) Project pairs author/journalist Silja J.A. Talvi with former prisoners, family members of the incarcerated, attorneys, journalists, in tandem with representatives of national social justice and civil rights organizations; Native/First Nations groups and tribal government; city/county government; health and human service organizations; and corrections/law enforcement organizations. (Such partnerships also involve local groups focused on reducing violence, poverty, homelessness, sexual abuse, as well as alcohol/substance abuse in their communities.)

The Women Behind Bars Project has already been to Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco Bay Area, Tucson (AZ), Olympia (WA), New York City, Portland, Santa Fe (NM), Minnesota and Seattle with pending events at MIT in Cambridge, MA, and Ann Arbor, MI. Readings, lectures, panels, radio interviews and print articles, as well as benefit events for community-based groups, have already brought about increased media/public attention to the many facets and consequences of large-scale female incarceration.

The Women Behind Bars Project is a sponsored project of the Center for Social Justice, a not-for-profit umbrella organization which supports and sustains socially progressive, community-based groups. All contributions to the Women Behind Bars Project/Center for Social Justice are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

To contact the Women Behind Bars Project, please send an email to womenbehindbars@gmail.com

Not Just a Number

I scream, I shout!
But my voiced is silenced
Behind these razor fences...
I’m scared to let down my defenses.
My eyes are brown and wide
rimmed red from the thousands
of tears I’ve cried

One mistake only leads to
another.

And I’m no longer a wife
or a mother–
You look through me
as if I don’t exist.
The fear, the pain, the loneliness
I continually resist.
Behind these brown eyes
I hide the person I really am –
the way I feel,
that’s the only way I can
deal.

–Cara Nicole Barker-Royall, serving an eight-year sentence in Gatesville, Texas

Even the smallest donation makes a difference. The Women Behind Bars Project wants to respond promptly to requests for information, resources, books to prisoners, and speaking engagements. We're already doing a lot with very little, but we need your help.