The number of women sent to prison has risen dramatically in recent years, both here in Wisconsin and in the nation at large; so it is increasingly important to understand how our system of incarceration tends to treat women and what the effects of that treatment are. MOSES members had some extraordinary opportunities in 2025 to learn about these issues.
Our February newsletter featured an interview with Jessica Jacobs, who survived repeated periods behind bars in her youth and is now supporting other women’s recovery as organizer of FREE in Madison, advocating for reforms in the way the system treats women, and pursuing a college degree that she hopes will enable her to teach either in an alternative high school or in prison. As Jacobs explained, her difficult youth – teen parenthood, dropping out of high school, alcohol and drug abuse, PTSD – both motivates her to work with girls who are in trouble and helps her connect with them.
In May, EXPO sponsored a showing of an award-winning 2012 documentary about women in prison, The Grey Area: Feminism Behind Bars. Besides some heart-breaking individual cases, the film included eye-opening statistics on the large proportion of incarcerated women who are mothers, and the even larger proportion who had previously been victims of domestic violence or sexual assault.
In November, those who attended WISDOM’s Listening Session at the state Capitol heard powerful first-hand testimony both from Jessica Jacobs, who described the near-impossibility of finding post-release housing if one is a woman with children, and from Crystal Keller, whose daughter was sent to Taycheedah Correctional Institution when her infant was 2 months old. For the next seven months, Keller’s daughter was prevented from reuniting even briefly with her baby, despite the fact that Wisconsin has had a law on the books since 1991 that requires incarcerated mothers to be housed with their babies for the first year after birth. Obviously, the Department of Corrections is not complying with that law.
“The program was allocated $198,000 per year,” Keller said. “Where is that money? That’s $6.7 million in the 35 years they’ve never offered it.”
The extra punishments inflicted on incarcerated women were also emphasized at the Journey to Justice event in October. One panelist described the dehumanizing experience of being placed in solitary confinement during her monthly period and having the male guards refuse to allow her period supplies, a shower, or clean clothes. She also reported seeing a friend who was eight months pregnant being put in a cell and stripped naked to look for drugs as she screamed – a traumatic experience even for those just witnessing it. Other panelists described the common practice of placing women in solitary confinement immediately after they have given birth and their babies have been taken away. This practice, which the DOC calls “protective custody,” actually compounds the cruelty, because it removes these postpartum women from the comfort that other women could provide them at such a vulnerable time.