This is my first marathon! I really wanted to pick a charity I fully believed in to motivate me to fundraise and run 26.2 miles (oh my god, that’s so far!) and I couldn’t imagine a better organization than the Women’s Prison Association. There are few things that I am as passionate about as decarceration. The criminal legal system in our country ruins lives rather than rehabilitates, and criminalizes black and browness, mental health issues, and poverty. Simply put, the way our criminal system functions is unjust.
Throughout college, I had the benefit of learning a lot about the intersection of criminalization and gender. More than 190,000 women in the U.S. are incarcerated at a rate growing at 2x time the speed of men’s incarceration in the past 40 years. Women face unique challenges in a prison environment— nearly 80% of incarcerated women are mothers, between 77% and 90% of those incarcerated women have experienced trauma, and 82% of female incarcerations are for misdemeanors or noncriminal violations. Most prisons in the country were designed for men with women as an afterthought, and this fact shows through the lack of programming and advocacy for women upon incarceration and reentry.
The Women’s Prison Association invests in women and communities instead of the prison industrial complex. It is an organization that knows that women are the experts of their own lives and seeks to empower them. WPA provides gender-responsive, individualized programs for women from housing solutions to preventive health and education. I am so excited to run for WPA and would be so appreciative if you helped me fundraise for this incredible organization.
