From The National Council:
For more than half a century, incarceration has haunted communities across the United States, leaving deep scars on families, neighborhoods, and generations. What began as a policy response under the so-called “War on Drugs” in the 1980s evolved into a sprawling carceral state—one that has failed to deliver safety, while succeeding at keeping communities poor, fragmented, and traumatized. Those who have lived its realities know the cost: the empty seat at the table, the lost income, the untreated illness, the thwarted potential, and the overall disastrous level of family and economic disruption in communities most directly affected.
Despite these profound harms, the experiences of incarcerated women have long been absent from academic research and public discourse. Historically, women’s incarceration has been treated as an afterthought—statistically invisible, politically marginalized, and socially stigmatized. That absence has come at a price: without their stories and data, the policies meant to “reform” incarceration have continued to replicate the very injustices they claim to address.
Work to Be Done: Women’s Incarceration in the 21st Century is a corrective to that silence. As the inaugural publication of the FreeHer Institute, the think tank of The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, this report compiles two decades of data, analysis, and lived experience to illuminate how incarceration harms individuals, destabilizes communities, and corrodes public health and local economies. It traces the enduring role of race and gender in sentencing and punishment, and documents how these traumas echo across generations. Most importantly, it centers the voices of women—those who have survived incarceration and who now demand that their truths shape the path forward.
Read more here.
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