Their pathways into the system differ, and they face distinct parental, health and economic challenges that affect their rehabilitation. They need our help.

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.

A new, groundbreaking study provides extensive documentation of the “IPV-to-Prison Pipeline”—the pathways through which women who are survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) find themselves serving long prison sentences for acts of survival.

There are over 12,000 women incarcerated in the United States for homicide, a broad category that ranges from manslaughter to first-degree murder. We do not know and have never known how many of these women killed someone who was abusing them. In the spring of 2020, Rachel Louis Snyder partnered with researchers at the Stanford Law School’s Criminal Justice Center for an ambitious study — the largest we know of to date — to find out. The article asks the question: Who is allowed to kill in the name of self-defense or protecting others and under what circumstances?

For some people, when it comes to how the criminal legal system consistently denies agency or visibility behind bars, denying access to beauty products for the 191,000 women currently incarcerated in the United States falls to the end of the list. Alongside shoulder-length hair mandates, limited menstrual-hygiene products, and uniforms exclusively offered in men’s sizes, restricting access to makeup is a means of control, one that also emphasizes how prisons are historically designed for men.

IGVSI Director, Ross Kramer, provides a statement on the conviction of Jonathan Majors.

IGVSI Director, Ross Kramer, makes a statement regarding Johnathan Major's sentence.