Women's Prison Association
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The Women's Prison Association (WPA), founded 1845, is the oldest advocacy group for women in the
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. Lawney Reyes, ''B Street: The Notorious Playground of Coulee Dam'', University of Washington Press, 2008, . The organization has historically focused on
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and
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issues. Since 2004 it has developed the Institute on Women & Criminal Justice, to focus a national conversation on women and criminal justice. Most of WPA's clients in its early years were poor Irish immigrants with
alcohol dependency Alcohol dependence is a previous (DSM-IV and ICD-10) psychiatric diagnosis in which an individual is physically or psychologically dependent upon alcohol (also chemically known as ethanol). In 2013, it was reclassified as alcohol use disorder ...
. While the ethnicity of the clients of the association has shifted over time, the organization throughout its history has dealt with the effects of poverty and
substance abuse Substance misuse, also known as drug misuse or, in older vernacular, substance abuse, is the use of a drug in amounts or by methods that are harmful to the individual or others. It is a form of substance-related disorder, differing definition ...
.


History

The WPA has its origins in the Prison Association of New York (now th
Correctional Association
, founded by Isaac T. Hopper, who had also been active as an
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. A task force was set up to investigate the conditions facing incarcerated women New York, and it was established in January 1845 as the Female Department of the Prison Association. Prominent members included Hopper's daughter Abigail Hopper Gibbons and novelist Catharine Sedgwick. From the outset, the Female Department criticized
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
–area prisons as inadequate, urging that "a home needs to be provided for the homeless; other doors need to be open to them than those that lead to deeper infamy." By the summer of 1845, the Female Department founded Hopper Home, what would today be called a
halfway house A halfway house is a type of prison or institute intended to teach (or reteach) the necessary skills for people to re-integrate into society and better support and care for themselves. Halfway houses are typically either state sponsored for those ...
, focused on training and rehabilitation of former prisoners or homeless. The Home was originally on Fourth Street near Eighth Avenue in
Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
; it later moved to 191 Tenth Avenue. In 1874, it was moved to its present building at 110 Second Avenue. In 1853, the Female Department separated from the Prison Association and was chartered by New York State as the Women's Prison Association, with Abigail Gibbons as its leader. The association gained influence. Some of its battles—such as against overcrowded jails—have been perpetual, but WPA lobbying has achieved policy and program changes. For instance, female matrons were hired in all state penal facilities holding women prisoners, a separate reformatory for women and girls was established in Bedford, New York, and the policy was adopted that women prisoners would be searched only by female matrons. In the 1930s, in the face of the economic exigencies of the
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
, the Women's Prison Association was the first women's group to call for the
decriminalization Decriminalization or decriminalisation is the legislative process which removes prosecutions against an action so that the action remains illegal but has no criminal penalties or at most some civil fine. This reform is sometimes applied retroacti ...
of
prostitution Prostitution is a type of sex work that involves engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, no ...
. After more than a century of operation, the WPA received its first governmental funding in the 1960s; the funding came from the federal government. In the 1980s, Hopper Home was contracted as a federal work release facility, but that contract ended in 1990. In 2022, the organization hired Caryn York, the organization's first Black woman executive director. She was inspired to join the organization due to her interactions with the legal/prison system in 2003. It was while she was in freshman year of college when she was smoking cannabis with some friends and her car was surrounded by six police vehicles and a patrol wagon. They were all arrested and taken to a local detention center. At the time, they possessed less than three grams of cannabis.


Current services

In the face of the rapid increase in the 1990s of the number of incarcerated women, WPA began to develop as a larger-scale provider of more diverse services. Hopper Home was renovated in 1992 as a residential alternative to incarceration (ATI) program, mainly for women with drug charges. In 1993, the WPA opened the Sarah Powell Huntington House (SPHH), a transitional residence that allows homeless women who have become involved with the criminal justice system to reunite with their children. In this same period, WPA established a variety of programs for
HIV-positive The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of '' Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the im ...
women involved in the New York criminal justice system. 25% of criminal justice-involved women in New York are HIV-positive. WPA programs include education and discharge planning in the city jail and state prisons, as well as case management services that can providing continuity after release. WPA coordinates inmate-peer
HIV/AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...
education and support programs at
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a women's prison Approximately 741,000 women are incarcerated in correctional facilities, a 17% increase since 2010 and the female prison population has been increasing across all contine ...
and Taconic Correctional Facility. Based on its successes in this area, WPA began to extend discharge planning and transitional services to women who are not HIV-positive. Their first such program was established at
Rikers Island Rikers Island is a prison island in the East River in the Bronx, New York (state), New York, United States, that contains New York City's largest jail. Named after Abraham Rycken, who took possession of the island in 1664, the island was orig ...
in 2000. From 2001, WPA has operated WomenCare, a program providing mentoring services to women leaving New York jail and prison systems.


Other projects

Other current WPA projects include the Incarcerated Mother's Law Project (IMLP), founded in 1994 and co-sponsored with the Volunteers of Legal Services (VOLS). South Brooklyn Legal Services and the Center for Family Representation have joined this project. The program provides workshops for incarcerated mothers to aid them in dealing with visitation and family court issues. IMLP began at New York state prisons, but has expanded to women in the New York City jail and to women in WPA's community-based services. Given the small number of New York City neighborhoods that are the origin of a large percentage of New York's prison population, since the late 1990s WPA has concentrated on one of these neighborhoods, the East New York area of
Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
. WPA established its Brooklyn Community Office (BCO) in 1999, to address the web of poverty, poor housing, health problems, and child abuse and neglect. The hope is that intensive case management can break the cycle of substance abuse and child abuse and/or neglect, and keep families intact. The program, which partners with several other organizations, expanded in 2005 to work also in the adjacent neighborhoods of
Bushwick Bushwick is a neighborhood in the northern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded by the neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens, to the northeast; Williamsburg to the northwest; the cemeteries of Highland Park to the southe ...
and Brownsville. In addition to its locally focused work, in 2004 WPA founded the Institute on Women & Criminal Justice "to create a national conversation on women and criminal justice in relation to families and communities."


See also

*
Incarceration of women in the United States The incarceration of women in the United States refers to the imprisonment of women in both prisons and jails in the United States. There are approximately 219,000 incarcerated women in the US according to a November 2018 report by the Prison ...


Notes

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External links


Women's Prison Association
official site *

', published by Women's Prison Association & Home Inc., 1995. Online version, New York Correction History Society, 1999. Charities based in New York (state) Women in New York City 1884 establishments in the United States Prison charities based in the United States History of women in New York (state) 501(c)(3) organizations