National Public Defense Virtual Conference 2021

In this session, you will have women who are living proof that there’s more to women returning citizens, then their conviction. The women will discuss their challenges, barriers, and lessons learned from being incarcerated and how each person deals with their unique struggles due to intersectionality. Topics covered include:

• Why it is essential to humanize people who have been directly impacted by incarceration. Seeing us as people first; not inmates, defendants, ex-felons, convicts. etc. After being relegated to second class citizenship, it’s vital that we are seen.
• We want people to be educated on issues of injustice, it is not our responsibility to teach. If we choose to, that is a decision that we are making; not an obligation we feel. 
• Systemic changes to the criminal legal system won’t happen unless people directly impacted are leading the movement; not asked for feedback after decisions have already been made for us. 
• Criminal justice reform is a racial/social justice issue. There are collateral consequences of incarceration that feed the cycle of poverty and marginalization of communities of color: job insecurity, lack of adequate healthcare, felonism (*the systemic, institutionalized prejudice against people suspected or convicted of a felony. This prejudice often extends to people who support individuals with a criminal history), etc.  
• The intersectionality of sexism, racism, classism and felonism that formerly incarcerated women face.
• Bring the audience proximate to the formerly incarcerated community allows them to see the humanity of those effected. We are more than felons or convicts. We are mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts.  Getting to know us as people is the first step in changing the narrative surrounding the incarcerated.

*www.urbandictionary.com