False narratives about justice-involved women obscure important realities about their criminalization and incarceration, prevent a culturally responsive, intersectional examination of women’s actual experiences and needs, rationalize policies and practices that are harmful, and fuel their incarceration. Criminal justice research and “reform” efforts often perpetuate these narratives. They ignore women and rely on a narrow set of criminal justice system inquiry and improvement tools that have been developed “for” women, not by or with them.
Designed and developed by the Women’s Justice Institute (WJI), the Women’s Justice Pathways Model (WJP) Model© leverages decades of research on justice-involved women and, most importantly, integrates their lived experience and expertise. Specifically, the WJP Model identifies 5 Rights & Needs for women.
Centering on the lived expertise of formerly incarcerated women leaders, this session will explore the WJP and how it can be used to dismantle the false narratives that permeate research and praxis, reinscribe systems of power and oppression, and perpetuate women’s criminalization and mass incarceration. It will include an overview of how the WJP has been applied to inform cross-sector decarceration and harm reduction strategies, architect peer-led diversion and reentry care coordination models and advance transformative policy changes that end the criminalization of women’s survival.
This session also serves as a call to action for administrators, practitioners, researchers, policy makers and advocates, providing concrete examples of how the WJP Model can be used to facilitate meaningful and sustainable system transformation at the community, facility and system levels.
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Deanne Benos
Co-founder and Director, Women's Justice Institute, USA
Benedict is a psychologist and public health practitioner with a subspecialty in the neurophysiology and ecology of trauma and resilience. The Executive Director of CORE Associates, she has 20+ years supporting system and agency level healing, growth, and transformation by promoting evidence-based and innovative approaches with women and girls, amplifying lived experience, and promoting inclusive and intersectional frameworks. Benedict has worked across the U.S. to promote gender responsive, culturally attuned and trauma-informed care, has served as an architect and core faculty for various national initiatives, and has authored and co-authored impactful publications, models, and staff training curricula, including NIC’s Supervision Agency Gender-Responsive Evaluation (SAGE), and the widely implemented trauma-informed staff communication model Creating Regulation and Resilience (CR/2™). Benedict is co-founder of the Women’s Justice Institute (WJI), a “think and do tank” building transformational justice across sectors with the goal of ending women’s mass incarceration, co-author of WJI’s groundbreaking report “Redefining the Narrative,” and co-creator of the Women’s Justice Pathways Model (WJP©) and other tools designed to support dynamic, cross-sector work. CORE and the WJI’s work continues to inform efforts to improve justice and behavioral health with women and communities, and has been featured at various state, national, and international conferences.
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Alyssa Benedict
Co-founder, Women's Justice Institute, USA
Benedict is a psychologist and public health practitioner with a subspecialty in the neurophysiology and ecology of trauma and resilience. The Executive Director of CORE Associates, she has 20+ years supporting system and agency level healing, growth, and transformation by promoting evidence-based and innovative approaches with women and girls, amplifying lived experience, and promoting inclusive and intersectional frameworks. Benedict has worked across the U.S. to promote gender responsive, culturally attuned and trauma-informed care, has served as an architect and core faculty for various national initiatives, and has authored and co-authored impactful publications, models, and staff training curricula, including NIC’s Supervision Agency Gender-Responsive Evaluation (SAGE), and the widely implemented trauma-informed staff communication model Creating Regulation and Resilience (CR/2™). Benedict is co-founder of the Women’s Justice Institute (WJI), a “think and do tank” building transformational justice across sectors with the goal of ending women’s mass incarceration, co-author of WJI’s groundbreaking report “Redefining the Narrative,” and co-creator of the Women’s Justice Pathways Model (WJP©) and other tools designed to support dynamic, cross-sector work. CORE and the WJI’s work continues to inform efforts to improve justice and behavioral health with women and communities, and has been featured at various state, national, and international conferences.
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Colette Payne
Director, Reclamation Project, Women's Justice Institute, USA
Colette is an organizer, leader, student, mother, and grandmother. She is the Director of the Women’s Justice Institute (WJI) Reclamation Project, the first initiative of its kind to be led by-and-for system-impacted women. Colette worked to design and launch the Reclamation Center in the Pilsen Arts Corridor of Chicago, which serves as the Project’s home for arts and advocacy, mutual support, healing and connection, community building and leadership development among women with lived experience. She engages women impacted by the criminal legal system to become agents of change and create solutions to end women’s mass incarceration. She speaks on topics ranging from the reunification of children and mothers, reproductive justice, mental health care, the need for increased programming in prisons, and barriers to employment for people with criminal records. She also provides expert testimony before legislative committees and has received several awards for her leadership, including Claim’s JoAnn Archibald award (2013), the Jane Adams Center for Social Policy and Research Community Leadership Award (2015), Safer Foundation’s Carre Visionary Award (2018) and the Chicago Foundation for Women (CFW) 2020 Impact award for her dedication to improving the lives of women and girls in the Chicago area.
