Women's Justice

When LaToyia Walker was sent to Texas Lockhart Correctional Facility in 2017, her grandmother would scribble short notes on pre-written greeting cards before mailing them to the prison. Writing letters had become challenging after her grandmother suffered a stroke in 2012, and the greeting cards were a critical way of maintaining contact.

Read the rest of this article from Filter Mag.

For the fourth consecutive year, the Texas Women’s Justice Coalition is taking action on International Women’s Day to keep women out of the justice system and improve outcomes for those who have been impacted by arrest and incarceration. The Texas Women’s Justice Coalition is comprised of more than 70 formerly incarcerated women, advocates, and service providers seeking to stem the tide of women’s incarceration, improve their conditions of confinement, and help women successfully return to their families and communities.

Today, a group of advocates, organizations, and system-impacted individuals released a letter sent to Texas Board of Criminal Justice Chairman Patrick O’Daniel, which highlights the negative impacts of the “Inspect 2 Protect” policy enacted at Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) facilities last year.

Kicking off the opening day of Texas’s 87^th Legislative Session, where state leadership will be contending with a billion-dollar budget shortfall, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) repeated their previous call for lawmakers to prioritize communities over corrections in an unprecedented year.

Read the rest of this press release here.

This week, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) released an open letter urging Texas leaders, legislators, and staff to prioritize justice reform during the state’s 2021 legislative session.

As it's commonly told, in 1920, the 19th amendment granted American women the ability to vote. But the reality is more complicated. In fact, the amendment was ratified in part because of the exclusionary rhetoric behind it; the women’s suffrage movement was undergirded by anti-Blackness and racism. 

Clutching a clear plastic bag of belongings, Lisa Oxendine walks slowly out of the Durham County Detention Facility and into a crowd awaiting her arrival. “I’m so glad to meet you,” Serena Sebring says, handing her a bouquet of bright flowers. “Welcome home.”

Read the rest of this article from Ms Magazine.

As imprisonment rates for women rise disproportionately across the nation, a group of formerly incarcerated women in Texas has called for family-oriented policies that provide mothers with community-based alternatives that allow them to avoid jail, in addition to major changes to state sentencing guidelines such as sharply lowered penalties for nonviolent drug offenses.

Read the rest of this article from The Crime Report.

Yesterday, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) released a new report sharing the future policy priorities of the Texas Women’s Justice Coalition. The report, called “The Future of Dignity: Insights from the Texas Women’s Dignity Retreat,” is the result of a wide-ranging policy discussion led by many of the women who pushed for eight new women’s justice bills to become law during the 2019 Texas legislative session.