Reentry Sisters Reentry Guide

This guide is written by women for women and all female-identifying persons. We are excited to share our Pathway to Sisterhood and Success with you! We hope you will find its content empowering as you navigate the transition from incarceration. If you are a family member, friend, or service provider of someone navigating reentry, we hope this guide helps you support your loved ones and community. Our goal is to provide you with a starting point for finding the support you need to uplift you and give you hope through the uncertainties of the transition from incarceration. Remember, once you are part of our Sisterhood, we are always here for you. You are never alone.

As soon as we are ready, we'll offer a FREE download and link to our online version.

Radical Love in Practice: A Cohort-Based Reentry Infrastructure Toolkit

Too often, reentry is treated as an afterthought to college-in-prison programming, leaving students without the continuity of support that sustains educational success. Reentry Sisters challenges this paradigm by embedding reentry within the very DNA of higher education pathways.

Our Education Initiative uses a cohort-based model that integrates academic advising, stipends tied to participation, and financial literacy training. Students also access mental health resources, peer mentoring, and holistic wraparound supports, which we call “radical love in practice.” This model sustains academic momentum and bridges college culture in ways that prevent isolation. Instead of a single system-impacted student struggling to assimilate into a campus of often younger, more privileged peers, the cohort provides a peer-supportive community that fosters confidence, camaraderie, and stability. The result is integration without assimilation: system-impacted students are neither separate nor invisible, but deeply included.

From our workshop at NCHEP 15. Download our Toolkit to create your education model by building infrastructure and support for justice-impacted students. Our Toolkit includes: an Ecosystem Map, Ecosystem Map Worksheet, Ecosystem Prompts, Building a Cohort-Based Program Worksheet, a Partnerships & Handoffs Planner, a 90-day Action Plan, and more.

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Justice Radio ~ WMPG

Justice Radio is a talk show that tackles hard questions about our criminal legal system in Maine. How do we envision justice? Does our current criminal legal system provide justice? Do prisons and jails keep us safe? What should accountability and repair look like in the wake of harm? How do people released into communities cope with the overwhelming adjustment to technology changes, finding housing and work, and building relationships? Our rotating hosts will offer an ongoing 4-week cycle of shows that address these and other questions through moderated conversations with leaders in the field of the criminal legal system, abolitionist organizers, justice-impacted people, and other experts and community members.

Mackenzie and Linda’s show, “Creating Windows, Not Bars,” talks about the challenges of reentry and airs on the third Sunday of every month at 11:30 am on WMPG 90.9.

Mackenzie Kelley and Linda Small of Reentry Sisters were interviewed by Catherine Besteman on Are Prisons the Answer? on Justice Radio

Visit: Justice Radio Archived episodes Listen on WMPG, WERU, and WMHB

Opportunity Scholars - Liberation through Education

Opportunity Scholars, through the Center for Effective Public Policy, supports and celebrates the accomplishments of people with lived experience in the carceral system, connecting them to higher education and fulfilling careers. Opportunity Scholars members support personal, professional, and academic growth by' fostering relationships with higher learning institutions, legislators, and community partners. Through our mutual support, Reentry Sisters and OS promote the expertise of system-impacted women in and through higher education.

Gender Justice - Center for Effective Public Policy

GENDER JUSTICE AT CEPP: POLICY, PARTNERSHIPS, AND PROGRESS 2025 Report

Building collective justice strategies across areas of difference is critical to advancing

the safety and health of our families and communities. We are proud to collaborate

with partners essential to our work's success, including currently and formerly

incarcerated people whose lived experiences are central to shaping our programs and

policies, and people whose lives have been impacted by violence.

Through this balanced approach, we are embracing the inherent tensions that exist between

systems and communities, moving our work forward and developing practical, harm-

reduction strategies. These women are not just participants; they are leaders,

collaborators, and experts in shaping policies and practices that reflect their realities

and needs. The following consultants worked almost 2000 hours across 2024 and 2025,

across our projects focused on improving the health and well-being of women.

Right/Write to Heal Initiative

The Right/Write to Heal: Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women in Their Own Voices is an initiative with the Center for Justice at Columbia University’s School of Social Work and VDay. We believe the time is overdue for women to tell their own stories, in their own voices, about how they came to be incarcerated, what prison has done to their lives, and what they face on the inside and after being released. Our mission with Right/Write to Heal: Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women in Their Own Voices is to impact the current narrative by empowering women to write and directly share their own stories through mainstream and social media, podcasts, and a published anthology, all archived for historical purposes; and the ultimate goal is to humanize the unique individual and collective experiences of women, particularly women of color, who from early in their lives face racism, violence, and structural barriers that lead to punishment and imprisonment. Maine and New York Sisters meet weekly for the Right/Write to Heal weekly writing group.

New England Commission on the Future of Higher Education in Prison

Brought together by the Educational Justice Institute at MIT, the New England Commission on the Future of Higher Education in Prison is a collaboration of critical stakeholders who work to increase the availability of affordable, high-quality postsecondary prison education programs in each of the six New England states. We identify specific ways in which stakeholders can collaborate within and across the states to accelerate progress, build capacity, economize resources, avoid duplication, and improve quality and outcomes. You can access the commission’s report by clicking here.

The Educational Justice Institute at MIT

Behind Bars is a prison education initiative promoting and teaching coding, website design, and computing knowledge for women. Mackenzie Kelley and Linda Small took this class offered through The Educational Justice Institute at MIT.

We are thrilled to use our skills learned in the Brave course for Reentry Sisters. Thank you to the team and coaches of the Brave Behind Bars course.

Here we are at The Educational Justice Institute for the New England Commission for the Future of Higher Education. Read the report here.

The National Council of Currently and Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls

Our Sisters at the National Council hosted a March in 2024 in Washington, DC. Please watch this video of the march and sisters in action.

Reentry Sisters is proud of our partnership with the National Council, both founded by incarcerated women to end the incarceration of women and girls.

Women's Justice Commission - Council on Criminal Justice

The Women’s Justice Commission is a multi-year research, policy, and communications initiative that documents and raises awareness of the unique challenges facing women in the justice system and builds consensus for evidence-based reforms that enhance safety, health, and justice. The project spans the full scope of the adult justice system—from arrest and diversion through prosecution, incarceration, release, and community supervision—with a particular focus on trauma-informed and gender-responsive prevention and intervention strategies.

Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition

Reentry Sisters works with MPAC to advocate for ethical, positive, and humane changes in Maine’s prison system. In collaboration with MPAC, Reentry Sisters presents public programming and educational events that highlight the specific issues faced by system-impacted women.

Institutions of Higher Education

Incarcerated women and men in Maine have educational opportunities in higher education. The following are some of the institutions that have established connections with the Maine Department of Corrections and provide classes and/or degree programs for residents.

Colby College

Colby College Justice Think Tank

MIT

Prison Education Initiative

Maine College of Art & Design

Art supplies and classes through MECA&D

Washington County Community College (ME)

Prison Education Programs

University of Maine at Augusta

Prison Education Partnership

Crisis Intervention Resources

The following are service providers for times of crisis.

● Warmline Sweetser 866-771-9276

o It is a mental health peer-to-peer phone support line for adults, aged 18 and older, offering mutual conversations with a trained peer specialist who has life experience with mental health recovery.

● Maine Crisis Line: 1-888-568-1112.

o The Maine Crisis Line (MCL) is the single point of entry to Maine's Behavioral Health Crisis Services System

● Text HOME to 741741 from anywhere in the United States, anytime. Crisis Text Line is here for any crisis. A live, trained Crisis Counselor receives the text and responds, all from our secure online platform. The volunteer Crisis Counselor will help you move from a hot moment to a cool moment.

● When you text GOOD2TALKNS to 686868, you'll be connected to a trained, volunteer crisis responder to talk about any issue on your mind.

Telehealth Platforms

Better Life Partners- Statewide Intake: 1-866-679-0831 Same or next day appointments typically available

Groups Recover Together- Statewide Intake: 1-800-683-8313 Same or next day appointments typically available