What We Do
Social Support Through Community Building
Reentry Sisters is a brave space and safe haven for women and girls. As system-impacted women, we celebrate our successes and lend support during our challenges. We uplift, encourage, and share information to help each woman achieve and sustain a life free of the carceral system, family policing organizations, and unhealthy relationships.
There are support groups for women returning to our communities; however, Reentry Sisters focuses on the unique needs of women. Women need a place to be messy and real in a non-judgmental forum among women who “get it.” We welcome women on home confinement, probation, or at any phase of the reentry process. Our monthly hybrid (in-person and Zoom) meetings help women statewide retain vital connections. Our open space encourages conversation about our fears and challenges, what makes us laugh or cry, and exchange social services information.
Direct Support
Radical Love Bags. Each woman released from Maine's prison received a bag customized to meet her immediate needs for clothing, personal care and other items. With the generous support of MECA&D faculty and students, we collaborated to include screened original art on the front of the bags and filled them with custom-designed and crafted journals, hand-made paper with inspirational messages, lovingly added art supplies, and other creative items.
Monthly Reentry Sisters meetings with women in community, at the Women's Center prison,and the Southern Maine Women's Reentry Center.
Maintaining connections and building social capital through our statewide network of Sisters in community through our Facebook group.
Create warm bridges to social services like housing, health care, mental health services, recovery coaches, work opportunities, and basic needs.
Education
The Reentry Sisters Education Initiative is designed to ensure college persistence and retention for justice-impacted women in community and those being released. Our Education model supports women, including :
- scholarships
- technical assistance
- financial literacy
- wellness and empowerment programming
- career services
- bridges to:
- mental health
- housing
- recovery services
This initiative will directly combat the 90% college dropout rate among formerly incarcerated individuals during reentry.
Why Education
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the higher the degree an incarcerated person receives, the lower the recidivism rate>
- 14 percent for an associate degree
- 5.6 percent for a bachelor’s degree,
- 0 percent effectively for a master’s degree
Education increases public safety, creates self-sustainable families, and fosters civic engagement.
Public Policy
Reentry Sisters actively advocates for policies that support people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. We believe all people deserve dignity, economic justice, and second chances.
We testify at legislative hearings on bills that support Reentry Sisters' mission and create more just, equitable, and fair systems for thriving individuals, families, and communities. If you have questions about a specific bill, please message us on our contact page.
Please visit our Legislative Basics page in the dropdown menu for how a bill becomes law, finding your representatives and senators, voting information, and tips and how-to testify at a legislative public hearing.
Public Awareness
2024 -2025 The American Council of Learned Societies Digital Justice Grant The ACLS Digital Justice Grants Program supports digital projects across the humanities and interpretative social sciences that critically engage with the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities through the ethical use of digital tools and methods.
Reentry Sisters board member Catherine Besteman and executive director Linda Small are on a collaborative research team with Brandon Brown and A. Cuba Jackson.
Freedom & Captivity Archive Project: Archiving Carceral Experience
Freedom & Captivity will build a digital archive of carceral experience - the hidden stories of Maine’s incarcerated community members - and perform that archive at venues across the state. The curated archive will be housed at the Maine Memory Network, Maine Historical Society’s digital history platform, and all the material collected for the project will be archived in Colby College Library’s Digital Collections. This will be the first archival space in Maine to hold stories about incarceration, curated and sensitively contextualized by those most impacted by carcerality. By offering a platform for the voices of those previously silenced by carcerality, our project aims to shift the narrative around justice, accountability, and the need for incarceration in the wake of harm.
Public Awareness
2024 -2025 The National Endowment for the Humanities announces $37.5 Million for 240 Humanities Projects Nationwide.
Reentry Sisters board member Catherine Besteman and executive director Linda Small are on a collaborative research team with Bridget Conley and Brittany Arneson from Tufts University.
Our project, The Praxis of Care: Carceral Disruptions and Community Resistance Project will collect stories from currently and formerly incarcerated folx, family members, volunteers, and staff about their experiences to coauthor a book that examines the experience of incarceration and caring for justice-impacted people in Maine and Massachusetts.
Events
Beyond the Bars Conference -NY
March 2025
Columbia University, New York
Reentry Sisters is presenting with the Opportunity Scholars a workshop on "Pathways to Freedom: A Holistic Approach to Student Success for Justice-Impacted Scholars." We share our model for success strategies of integrating academic achievement with wellness through mental health resources and support, career readiness programs, personal development opportunities, and, most important, a strong community, ensuring that justice-impacted students have the tools to excel beyond the classroom.
March 2024
Columbia University, New York r
Reentry Sisters partnered with the Center for Effective Public Policy to discuss Integrating Gender Justice Strategies Within and Beyond the Walls Center for Justice at Columbia University's Beyond the Bars Conference in NYC! Our session explored and analyzed tensions within collective movements to advance change within and outside of carceral spaces.
Events
Beyond the Bars Conference - Maine
Date: October 4-6, 2024
Location: The Women's Center Prison in Windham< Maine and the University of Southern Maine (USM), Portland, Maine
This 3-day event began with a day inside the women's prison with legislators, community partners, and stakeholders designing pathways to wellbeing and recovery for families, and strengthening educational and employment opportunities for women.
Reentry Sisters held the "What is Gender Justice" workshop during the conference. We offered that gender is not a substitute for the term woman, it refers to social systems that create vulnerabilities and privileges based on gender - for all gendered people. Our workshop included discussion on the global anti-gender movement, interactive games and scenarios to experience oppression and discrimination, and a solutions data walk.
Events
State of Women's Incarceration Forum
May 17, 2024
University of Southern Maine (USM), Portland, Maine
Reentry Sisters, the National Council, Women Transcending, and the Opportunity Scholars, with the generous support of the Bingham Project at USM, offer a forum by justice-impacted women to strategize; share resources; and create action plans for legislative change, the use of clemency laws and early release, reentry services for women, and ending the incarceration of women and girls.
We invite activists, advocates, and allies to join us for an immersive and interdisciplinary approach that brings together leaders from across multiple states to end mass incarceration for women and girls.
former Maine State Representative,
former Mayor of Hallowell, Maine,
and owner of C Warren Consulting