The facts:

State and federal prisons have seen a 122% increase in confined women since 1991. This represents part of the six-fold increase of women in the last three decades, as compared to threefold for men. In California, nearly 80% of women in jails and prisons are mothers, and many will resume their caregiving responsibilities upon release.

With AB 109, California’s realignment program, California has released thousands of women into the community, and will continue to do so.  Women disproportionately represent those who served time for non-violent crimes, and are thus are disproportionately impacted by AB 109.  The women released as a result of realignment have faced and continue to face numerous barriers to finding employment that would enable them to support themselves and their families upon release.

ERA’s Project:

Through an innovative project funded by Levi Strauss Foundation (Breaking Barriers), ERA has developed a project to help empower formerly incarcerated women with knowledge of their employment-related rights and with a voice to tell their stories through video and social media, and to expand their employment opportunities through policy change.  Through these efforts, we hope to not only improve the outcomes for the women seeking to reenter into society, but also for their children, their families, and their communities.

• ERA is producing a video tracing the stories of formerly incarcerated women in the San Francisco Bay area and the excessive barriers they face to economic stability and employment. Through the video we hope to inspire the public to support progressive criminal justice and realignment reform for women and formerly incarcerated people in California.
• ERA is collaborating with other organizations, such as the San Francisco Women’s Resource Center (run by the San Francisco Sherriff’s Department) and the National Employment Law Project, to provide women with criminal conviction histories with trainings about their rights.  Learn more here.
• ERA is working with a broad coalition of Bay area organizations to promote legislation and other strategies to remove employment obstacles faced by women with criminal convictions.  Learn more here.

ERA is working with diverse stakeholders and unlikely allies to inform all aspects of our project. Some of the stakeholders ERA has begun working with include:  the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and Sherriff’s Department, the San Francisco Adult Probation Department, the San Francisco Reentry Council, Goodwill, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, East Bay Community Law Center, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, the National Employment Law Project, and the Women’s Resource Center.

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