The Women's Justice Institute - WJI

08/20/2026

The Women’s Justice Institute (WJI) was thrilled to join colleagues from across the region and the APPA at this year’s American Probation and Parole Association National Institute right here in Chicago!

We were honored to participate in the special community resource fair for system-impacted individuals, sharing information about our programs as Chicago's historic, first-ever designated women’s re-entry hub.

A massive shout-out to our friends and colleagues from APPA Veronica Ballard and Delores Johnson, and our amazing WJI Reclamation Center team— Shanice Page, Dyanna Wi******er and Melanie Rodgers—who represented us so beautifully and deeply engaged with our community! 🤝✨

08/19/2026

The WJI stands with Keshia Golden.

“Dismiss these charges and let Keshia and her daughter walk free into their futures," said Kyan Keenan, a Cook County assistant public defender. "The medical evidence supports Keshia; the physical evidence supports Keshia. The history of violence supports Keshia, and the truth supports Keshia."

Supporters of a Chicago woman charged in the death of her boyfriend rallied at Daley Plaza on Thursday, calling on the Cook County State's Attorney's Office to drop the charges ahead of her murder trial.

08/09/2026

A huge thank you to all the families and partners who joined us for a day of family fun and excitement to kick off the school year at WJI’s Annual Back to School Backpack Drive!

Special thanks to all of our partners! A shout out to WJI Reclamation Specialist Shanice Page for her extraordinary work leading the effort, the The Care Kit Foundation, and the Chicago Dept of Family and Support Services (DFSS) for their incredible support of our new role as the City of Chicago’s first Women’s Community Reentry & Support Center! 🎒✨

07/18/2026

Over 80% of incarcerated women are mothers. Children and families deserve to be together. While the harm of separation cannot be erased, WJI and our family partners collaboratively build programs together to maintain bonds and create memories on both sides of the wall.

Through the WJI Children & Families Initiative, our “Family Fun Day” program will engage hundreds of children and family members with incarcerated loved ones at every Illinois women’s prison this summer in a day of joy that transcends by celebrating these most precious moments of family togetherness.

Thank you to our community of support for all of the donations that made this possible, and to our volunteers!

07/09/2026

Please help us make memories! Consider purchasing an item off of this list or sharing with others.

This summer, mothers and their families at Logan and Decatur Correction Centers will join together for our third annual Family Fun Day. This is an outdoor celebration of the love that families share, full of games, drawing, food, and fun. As one child told us, it was "the best day of my life!"

As an estimated 400 participants come together this year at the two prisons, we are asking for your help in sending supplies to make the day even better. Games, food, and art supplies help to make an "outdoor field day" even more fun and unforgettable. By selecting an item off of our wish list or donating money, you can ensure that Family Fun Day is a memory never to be forgotten.

While the shipping address should auto-populate off of the wish list, the address should be Office of the Warden, Logan Correctional Center, 1096 1350th Street, Lincoln, IL 62656. In addition, we are seeking donations of food from restaurants and bakeries. Please contact [email protected] with any questions.

06/27/2026

The Women’s Justice Institute (WJI) commends the Council on Criminal Justice’s Women’s Justice Commission (WJC) for releasing two timely reports that highlight the rising number of women under correctional control and the growing financial and human costs of incarceration.

As a national advisor to the Commission, WJI has been proud to help inform this work, including by hosting the Commission at WJI’s peer-led Reclamation Center in Chicago last year to share our decarceration model and strategies. Those approaches, first outlined in WJI’s groundbreaking 2021 Redefining the Narrative report, helped guide Illinois’ successful effort to reduce the state’s women’s prison population by 50 percent.

The Commission’s findings, which include national data and a focus on Illinois and North Carolina, reinforce what Redefining the Narrative made clear: Women’s incarceration carries staggering costs for women, children, families and communities. WJI estimated that the impact in Illinois alone totaled nearly $1 billion over a ten-year period, while also documenting how women’s incarceration often carries higher costs because of unmet healthcare needs, trauma and family disruption.

Illinois proved that meaningful change is possible. The state achieved a 50 percent reduction in its women’s prison population without any notable increase in crime or risks to public safety by embracing evidence-based reforms and the lived expertise of system-impacted women. Yet recent increases in the number of women entering jails and prisons, particularly for low-level charges and offenses connected to interpersonal violence, remind us that progress is not permanent. We cannot afford to be complacent.

These reports should strengthen the work already underway in Illinois and nationally and serve as a clear reminder to policymakers that this is the time to double down on proven solutions—not retreat from them. To end women’s mass incarceration, we must continue investing in community-based care, housing, healthcare, family support and economic opportunity, as well as systems deflection/ diversion,peer-led reentry and pathways to freedom for criminalized survivors of gender-based violence.

New reports find women cost 25% to 75% more to imprison than men, while reducing time served could save states millions with minimal public safety impact

06/26/2026

The Women's Justice Institute was delighted to work together with the Cook County Public Defender's Office and DuPage Public Defender's Office to ensure that people receive credits for completed programming. This is particularly important in larger counties, like Cook County, where some defendants may spend over ten years waiting for a trial, resulting is disproportionate sentencing.

06/26/2026

Today marks the release of the Designing Justice: Essential Elements of Survivor Justice Laws report. Our team is proud to have played an important role in the survivor-led advocacy and design of the nationally significant policies featured this report, and are committed to continuing the fight for criminalized survivors everywhere.

Our latest report, Designing Justice: Essential Elements of Survivor Justice Laws, builds on our work fighting to decriminalize survivors of abuse. For decades, survivors of abusive relationships—disproportionately girls and women—have been unjustly punished by courts that do not consider the ci...

05/29/2026