What Tutwiler taught us
On Saturday, February 25th, Changed Choices hosted a showing and discussion of Tutwiler. The film shares a behind the scenes look at the Julia Tutwiler Prison, the only women’s prison in Alabama. Approximately 40-50 pregnant women are serving their sentence at the facility each year. The film explores helping expectant and new mothers learn childbirth […]
How does incarceration impact your health?
February is American Heart Month, and we join in raising awareness about cardiovascular disease–the number 1 killer of women. Incarceration creates multiple risk factors for heart disease including: Studies have shown that the health risks only increase upon release. “People recently released from incarceration are more likely to die; in the first two weeks following […]
What’s a Release Card?
Rounding out our January series from Prison Policy Initiative, what’s a Release Card? When a person leaves a correctional facility, they often receive their funds, which include wages earned while incarcerated, support from family members, or money they possessed when arrested, on a pre-paid debit card. While pre-paid debit cards are common, it might be […]
Mail Scanning
In February 2020, The North Carolina Department of Public Safety began a test of TextBehind for the female inmate population. TextBehind, a private mail processing company, was commissioned to process all written mail. No longer does an inmate in North Carolina received written mail; all mail is first sent to Maryland where TextBehind is located. […]
Phone Justice for inmates and families
In December of 2022, Prison Policy Initiative share the state of phone justice for inmates and their families. Rates for calls from prisons and jails have come down in recent years thanks to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and state legislators efforts. North Carolina still ranks among the highest cost, $3.01 per 15 minute call, […]
Prison Policy Initiative 2022 report
Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit established in 2001 to produce cutting edge research to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization, recently released a collection of their most important stories and research for 2022. This month, we will touch on how this information directly impacts the women we serve. In April of 2022, Prison Policy […]
Keeping connected just got easier
The last weeks of December brought new hope to families and inmates. On December 22nd, the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022 was passed by the House of Representatives and is headed to the President’s desk. This legislation gives the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the authority to establish maximum service rates in […]
It all comes at a cost
“It’s more like $100…it takes about $100 a month to cover your costs in prison.”
Maternal Incarceration casts a long shadow
In the next few weeks, two Changed Choices clients will be able to celebrate the holidays with their children. After years of incarceration, each mother will be able to hug their children, sit across the table for a meal, and wrap Christmas presents themselves. “They had to do the time right alongside me.” Did you […]
Prison work and wages
Nearly 2/3 of people incarcerated in state and federal prisons work-almost 800,000 people.