Women face unique challenges reentering society from prison.
Reentry Sisters empowers currently and formerly incarcerated women by fostering community connections, self-sufficiency, and dignity through a trauma-informed, gender-responsive approach. We advocate for systemic change, ensuring all women are supported in their transition from incarceration to thriving futures.
Our vision is a world where all women—regardless of gender identity, race, sexuality, class, ability, age, ethnicity, or citizenship status—are embraced, empowered, and supported while incarcerated and in their reentry journey. Through sisterhood, advocacy, and equitable access to resources, we work to dismantle systemic biases and build pathways to economic justice and lasting change.
Prisons are built by and for men. While women comprise a small percentage of incarcerated people, the number of women behind bars has sharply increased over past decades and the criminal legal system perpetuates injustice based on gender. Most women in prison are trauma survivors and many struggle with substance use.
Upon release from prison, women face the same hurdles as men in acquiring housing, employment, transportation, and reunification with family members. Women face additional hardships in their social roles as heads of household, primary caretakers of children and elderly parents, and nurturers of our communities. While many men return to mothers, wives, and girlfriends, women often choose between returning to the abusive homes that drove them into prison or homelessness. Once released, services typically ignore the unique challenges faced by women who are doubly harmed by the stigma of their conviction history. In the past decade, 713 people in Maine died while on probation, many of them women without resources. Gender oppression compounded by societal labels of being bad mothers or believed to be women who have abandoned their families makes a successful recovery from incarceration nearly impossible without social support from women who have successfully transitioned.
Reentry Sisters is one of the few organizations in the U.S. – and the only organization in Maine – that serves the needs of justice-impacted women.
A Special Thank You to our Funders
All of our community member donors!
We have a lot of work to do, and your generous donation helps us get this important work done.
Reentry Sisters is the only organization in Maine dedicated to helping justice-impacted women reenter society. Please invest in our work.
Giving Options ....
Reentry Sisters is a nonprofit organization.
Employer Identification Number:
93-2673364
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