Ahead of Mother’s Day, Let’s Remember and Support Moms Behind Bars
Published in Chronicle of Philanthropy | By Allana Jackson, Alexandra Williams, Nidhi Sahni, and Cora Daniels
A teenage daughter says good-bye to her mother, an inmate at the Pekin, Ill., federal prison, at the end of a visit.
Here’s a Mother’s Day story that is rarely told: The majority of women in prison are mothers or pregnant and destined to become parents while incarcerated. In fact, more than 60 percent of women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18.
Motherhood behind bars is surprising only because gender is routinely stripped from the national dialogue about criminal-justice reform. Similarly, gender-rights movements too often overlook women, including transgender women, affected by the criminal legal system.
This oversight ignores a stunning reality: Women are the fastest growing population of incarcerated people in the United States. The growth rate of incarceration for women in recent decades is twice that of men. Consider that in 1980 about 26,000 women were incarcerated. By 2019, that number was more than 231,000.
Sexual abuse and sexual violence have become such accurate predicators of girls’ entry into the criminal legal system that researchers now talk about the “sexual abuse to prison pipeline.”That pipeline includes girls who are victims of sex trafficking and those who run away from home because of sexual abuse and are arrested for truancy.
Here’s another startling statistic: A quarter of all women incarcerated have not been convicted of a crime but are imprisoned because they are unable to make bail while awaiting trial. In essence, these women are jailed for being too poor. Do we have your attention yet?
All of this falls most heavily on Black women, who are two times more likely than white women to be incarcerated and also experience the economic and emotional effects of a family member’s incarceration far more frequently. The rate of incarceration for Black trans women is almost 20 times that of the general population, and one in two Black trans women report being incarcerated in their lifetimes. Similar patterns of racial disparity are evident in the juvenile court system, with Black girls and teens 20 times more likely to face charges than white girls.
The Black Mama’s Bail Out, an annual Mother’s Day action coordinated by a collective of Black-led organizations, shines a spotlight on this incarceration crisis by raising funds for a mass bailout of Black mothers and caregivers from jails across the nation.
Philanthropy is keen on outcomes. What, then, is the outcome when criminal justice is not seen as a women’s issue? It is, quite simply, the systemic erasure of the reality experienced by Black women and girls. If philanthropy cares about gender equity, it needs to invest more in criminal-justice reform. Likewise, if philanthropy cares about transforming our criminal legal system, it needs to address the impact on women, girls, and nonbinary people.
The urgency of this call to philanthropy came into focus for our organization, the Bridgespan Group, after recently conducting two major research projects that explored the power of both the criminal-justice and feminist movements.
Led by those affected by injustice, movements challenge existing power structures and advance a new vision by using collective action to create cultural, economic, and political change. Movements have repeatedly shown the impact individuals can have when they organize for their own liberation. Historically, movements have fueled monumental change on issues such as expanding voting rights in the United States and ending apartheid in South Africa.
It is movements that will play a critical role in the gender-inclusive transformation of our criminal legal system.
Does philanthropy have a place in movement building? The short answer is yes. Money matters for movements. Philanthropic funding isn’t required to start a movement because people would come together and fight for a better life regardless. But philanthropy is the fuel that gives movements lasting power, propels them toward transformative success, and sustains them against powerful opposition. Just this week, the abortion-rights movement made it clear that it would continue to lead the fight following the leaked Supreme Court opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The criminal-justice movement is woefully underfunded. Our report “Making the Case: Philanthropy’s Role in the Movement to Reimagine Criminal Justice” found that funding for criminal-justice reform came to just $343 million in 2019, the most recent year data is available. By contrast, the $2.2 billion bail-bonds industry is just one slice of the system that has a strong interest in maintaining the status quo. One of the critical funding gaps is leadership development, according to our analysis. Gender and race-based barriers make it especially tough for Black women leaders to get funding.
Our second report, “Lighting the Way: A Report for Philanthropy on the Power and Promise of Feminist Movements” — created with the nonprofit Shake the Table — looks at the impact of feminist movements across the world. Because feminist movements are typically led by those experiencing multiple forms of oppression, they are often best suited to upend injustice for everyone. But they need far greater resources. To make up for decades of underinvestment, the report calls on philanthropy to invest $6 billion by 2026 in feminist movements with an emphasis on those in the Global South, as well as movements led by women, girls, and nonbinary people from Black, Indigenous, and communities of color.
The Black Lives Matter movement, the brainchild of three Black women, vividly illustrates the potential power at the intersection of feminist leadership and revamping the criminal-justice system. In what many scholars now consider one of the largest movements in the nation’s history, 25 million people in the United States, and others across the world, took to the streets two years ago demanding racial justice in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the thousands of other Black lives lost to police violence. The movement has explicitly embraced what it calls a “Black queer and trans feminist lens.” In fact, the idea for the Black Mama’s Bail Out came during a policy working session facilitated by the Movement for Black Lives.
The transformation of our criminal legal system is intertwined with many issues grant makers care about, including education, access to housing, employment, economic mobility, health and mental illness, and climate change. Because of this connectivity, those who work on what foundations might label criminal-justice reform see their work as part of larger efforts to build an equitable and just society.
It is time for philanthropy to recognize that Black women, girls, and nonbinary people are a part of that story. What a Mother’s Day gift that would be.
About the Authors
Allana Jackson: Allana Jackson is a partner at the Bridgespan Group.
Alexandra Williams: Alexandra Williams is a manager of the Bridgespan Group.
Nidhi Sahni: Nidhi Sahni is head of the Bridgespan Group’s US Advisory unit.
Cora Daniels: Cora Daniels is an editorial director at the Bridgespan Group.