The Women's Prison Association: Supporting Women Offenders and Their Families

This NIJ Program focus provides an indepth look at the Women's Prison Association (WPA), an incorporated nonprofit agency in New York City that offers peer education, support, and transitional services to female inmates who are HIV+ or at risk for infection; and emergency and transitional housing, individualized case management services, skills-building workshops, child care, counseling, and other supports to released women, their children, and their families. The WPA programs incorporate many features that correctional experts consider essential to programming for women. It demonstrates program effectiveness by creating new mechanisms for tracking individual clients and measuring their ability to maintain housing and improve their family situations.