The sentencing of women under the U.S. criminal legal system has exploded profoundly and alarmingly over the past 25 years. According to the Sentencing Project, the number of women in prison in the United States increased by 700% between 1980 and 2014, growing from just 26,378 women behind bars in 1980 to 215,332 in 2014. As a result of this seven-fold jump in the criminalization and incarceration of women—the majority for drug and other nonviolent offenses, the incarceration rate for women has now surpassed that of men and continues to accelerate.
The overwhelming majority of women in prison are survivors of domestic violence, and more than 60% of women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18. Three-quarters have histories of severe physical abuse by an intimate partner during adulthood, and 86% have suffered serious physical and/or sexual abuse as children. Many women find themselves incarcerated even after defending themselves against intimate partner violence and sexual assault. The intersectionality among trauma, sexual assault, domestic violence, and incarceration faced by thousands of women across America—known as the abuse-to-prison pipeline—is evident. The need for gender-responsive, community-based services has never been greater.
Launched by CJI in 2020, the Until She’s Free is a necessary, strategic, and timely response to this growing crisis. Until She’s Free is an innovative, participatory grantmaking circle comprised of community organizers, many of whom have experienced incarceration, working alongside donors and donor activists. We share power and a passion for supporting a meaningful, transformative, and systemic change in the criminal legal system, as well as a commitment to interrogating the elements of a Just Sisterhood.
Until She’s Free is a grantmaking initiative strictly supporting women-led organizations addressing state-sanctioned violence against women and girls, including trans women and trans girls, and gender-nonconforming people, and their criminalization and subsequent incarceration, while also elevating their leadership in bringing about foundational change.
The Until She’s Free Fund supports work in the following focus areas:
- Ending the abuse-to-prison pipeline;
- Establishing alternatives to incarceration;
- Ensuring human rights in conditions of confinement;
- Clemency campaigns for women in state and federal prisons, especially those who are elderly, infirm, and/or serving extremely long sentences;
- Family reunification, including an end to automatic termination of parental rights due to incarceration, especially for parents and children at the U.S. border; and
- Restoring rights and opportunities to women and girls taken or restricted due to a history of incarceration or detention.
Though deeply tied to it, the fund is not limited to the criminal legal system and may extend to address other forms of state-sanctioned violence against women and girls, such as the Texas abortion ban which criminalizes abortion, and other issues surrounding reproductive justice such as coerced sterilization in immigration detention.
The Until She’s Free Fund restores power to directly impacted women by providing resources through unrestricted general operating support grants and capacity-building opportunities that enhance their organizations’ operations, infrastructure, and programming with technical assistance and education. Until She’s Free grantees selected in our inaugural year of 2020 work strategically in the areas of the restoration of rights, sentencing, and bail reform, community-based alternatives to incarceration, economic justice, and reproductive justice. In 2020, the first year of grantmaking, the Until She’s Free Fund awarded $400,000 to women-led organizations. In 2021, that number grew to $500,000.
CJI was an early funder of several notable and preeminent woman, girl, and trans-led organizations responsible for game-changing campaigns, policies, and support for systematic change, including California Coalition of Women Prisoners, Women on the Rise Telling Her Story (WORTH), Center for Young Women’s Development (Young Women’s Freedom Center), INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Transcending Barriers, Justice Now!, Women on the Rise, TGI Justice Project, and the National Network of Women Prisoners. In its first two years of operation, the Until She’s Free Circle has awarded a total of 45 Until She’s Free grants, each at the $20,000 level, for a grand total of $900,000.
