With 6,000 prisoners released, almost all men, we're taking a look at what life was like for women behind bars.
It seems like there’s a new headline every day about prison reforms, shifting the focus from retribution to reintegration.
Among the moves: “ban the box” with the president telling federal employers to stop making job applicants disclose criminal history.
And then there were the record six-thousand federal prison inmates who felt freedom this week, deemed nonviolent drug offenders eligible for early release.
492 of those inmates were women. And thousands more are now eligible to apply.
People don’t spend a lot of time talking about what prison means for a woman. But Andrea James ( @andreacjames), Beatrice Codianni and Carol Soto have been there and are looking to change that.
Beatrice Codianni served time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut alongside Piper Kerman, the woman behind the hit Netflix series Orange is the New Black. She was the inspiration behind “Esposito” in Kerman’s book, which became the series and she’s now managing editor of “Reentry Central,” a national group dedicated to criminal justice reform.
Carol Soto served time in Danbury as well, and was the inspiration for Kerman’s character “Yoga Jones."
Andrea James is an author and lawyer who served time in Danbury several years after the others. She also founded the organization Families for Justice as Healing.
