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Rebel Justice
What is justice? Who does it serve? Why should you care?
When we think about justice, we think about it as an abstract, something that happens to someone else, somewhere else. But justice and the law regulate every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organisations, and with the government.
We never think about it until it impacts our lives, or that of someone close.
Our guests are women with lived experience of the justice system whether as victims or women who have committed crimes; or people at the forefront of civic action who put their lives on the line to demand a better world..
We ask them to share their insight into how we might repair a broken and harmful system, with humanity and dignity.
We also speak with people who are in the heart of the justice system creating important change; climate activists, judges, barristers, human rights campaigners, mental health advocates, artists and healers.
Rebel Justice
E. 83: Part 2 - WPA Designing for Dignity: Housing, Policy, and the Future of Justice
Welcome back to Rebel Justice and part two of our illuminating conversation with Meg Egan, CEO of the Women's Prison Association—America's first organization dedicated to women impacted by incarceration.
Where our first episode explored personal stories driving WPA's mission, this segment zooms out to examine systemic solutions. Meg shares critical insights from her time working at Rikers Island, where she witnessed firsthand the profound failures of mass incarceration, particularly for vulnerable populations. Her experiences supervising solitary confinement units holding teenagers and later overseeing jail conditions during the pandemic have cemented her conviction that fundamental change is urgently needed.
At the heart of this episode is WPA's revolutionary approach to supporting justice-impacted women and gender-expansive people. Rather than rigid programs, they offer personalized care that restores agency to individuals who've been systematically denied it. We explore their newest permanent supportive housing project, the Rise, where trauma-informed design creates environments conducive to healing. Meg articulates how thoughtful architecture, community connection, and dignified support create pathways to stability that punishment never could.
Credits
Guest: Meg Egan
Soundtrack: Particles (Revo Main Version) by [Coma-Media]
Producer: Charlotte Janes
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You're listening to Rebel Justice, the podcast from the View magazine. When we think about justice, we think about it as an abstract, something that happens to someone else somewhere else, but justice and the law regulate every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organisations and with the government. We never think about it until it impacts our lives or those of someone close. Our guests are women with lived experience of the justice system, whether as victims or women who have committed crimes. People at the forefront of civic action who put their lives on the line to demand a better world. We ask them to share their insight into how we might repair a broken and harmful system with humanity and dignity. We also speak with people who are in the heart of the justice system, creating important change Judges, barristers, human rights campaigners, mental health advocates, artists and healers. Artists and healers.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Rebel Justice and to part two of the conversation with Meg Egan, ceo of the Women's Prison Association, the US's first organization for women impacted by incarceration. If you missed part one, I highly recommend going back and giving it a listen. We explored the deeply personal stories that fuel WPA's mission the lived experiences of women and gender expansive people navigating incarceration, trauma, survival and systemic injustice. It's a powerful look at why this work matters and who it's for. In today's episode, we zoom out to explore the bigger picture. We dive into WPA's newest permanent supportive housing project, the Rise, and how trauma-informed design can be a foundation for healing, stability and real freedom. We talk about building spaces and systems that acknowledge the realities of incarceration, gender, race, queerness and care. Meg also shares hard-earned insights from inside Rikers Island and we get into what meaningful policy and funding reform could look like, not just in New York City, but as a model for community-driven justice everywhere. This is a conversation about how we build safety, not through cages or punishment, but through dignity, compassion and real support.
Speaker 2:And I notice, like also your demographic, how you have a lot of clients who are LGBTQ. How do you help that community in particular? Do you have programs or systems in place for them?
Speaker 3:It's all embedded within the program. So you know again, whatever someone needs, we will work to provide either in-house, so to speak, right. Either we will provide that service directly or help them get connected to the community that we work with as anyone identifying as a woman. So you know, we want to be as expansive as we can and then it's up to the individual right. It depends on what the individual need actually is and that we provide it. So it's, rather than a specific program, it's really about the fabric of services that we have.
Speaker 2:It sounds like it's very personalized. Yes, I think that's really powerful, I think, to these individuals because maybe sometimes they don't feel like they have somebody to go to, like you said, and also they don't have maybe that personalized care and targeted action plan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think the other thing that is important about it is it empowers people. It empowers people to say this is what I need, and gives people agency when their experience with the system is anything but right. And so restoring that agency and empowerment is really a key component to giving people the meaningful opportunities to thrive. And so it's not obvious, it's not like a dedicated program, it's just the way we work, but it's a really, really it's just the way we work, but it's a really, really important piece of the way we work.
Speaker 2:I want to circle back to something you said before. You said you've worked previously on Rikers Island. I'm wondering how that has played a role and everything that you've worked on and everything that the organization has been in contact with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the first time I ever went to Rikers Island was just after I came to New York and actually had spent when I was still in Chicago, had spent a lot of time at the Cook County Jail and, in the last couple of years, actually worked at the Cook County Jail, and one of the things that experience instilled in me was a belief that you always have to see something with your own eyes to really understand it, and so the first opportunity I had to go to Rikers, I did. I was working in the governor's office at that point we went to the unit there were still this was before Raise, the Age had passed and so there were still 16 and 17 year olds on the island, and one of the units that we went to was the solitary confinement unit that held 16 and 17 year olds, and it was horrifying. It was also incredibly heartbreaking. My takeaway was we have failed, we've totally failed these kids, and so I, you know, I continued doing that work, and part of what I worked on was that was the plan to close Rikers and worked with a bunch of incredible colleagues on releasing the first plan. I was at the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance at the time, and we worked really closely with the Center for Justice Innovation, then the Center for Court Innovation and the Vera Institute and a bunch of others to craft a plan that was feasible. And what I was focused on was if you can close the island. Focused on was, if you can close the island, what do you replace it with?
Speaker 3:And so we really focused on what the environment would be in the borough-based jails, and really what we wanted it to be was a much smaller system that was centered on care rather than security or control, and so we made a series of recommendations to really design those buildings to be centered on programming, on care, on opportunity and also education, sort of going back to what I said about the RISE really think about the built environment, make sure that it is a safe and warm and human environment, and that matters for people who are held there. It also matters for staff, because the conditions that people in custody are held in are the exact same conditions that people working there experience, and that's good for no one. And the other piece of this was really trying to think about other systems that are more appropriate to care for people rather than a jail system. So that's part of reducing the population. That is essential. There's not a worse place for someone with a serious mental illness than a jail. There's no way anyone can provide care. It's also, again, not fair to the staff because that level of care is not what they are trained to provide and so, again, it's not good for anyone.
Speaker 3:And the other piece of the borough-based jail plan was just intentionally having those facilities in communities, and I understand why communities push back on that. But the intention really is in downtown areas close to courthouses because really the point of having someone in jail is to make sure they return to court and accessible by public transportation, which means people's families, their attorneys and other providers can have access to them. Right now it's next to impossible to get to Rikers Island. There's one bridge, that's it, and it's not close to public transportation, and so what families need to do to go visit their loved ones is really unconscionable. It takes a full day, which means someone has to take a day off of work and bring their kids on a subway, on a bus. It doesn't make sense for anyone and, again, I think, has a real public safety implication. So that was sort of the starting point for the plan to close Rikers. The city has taken that. Hopefully we are moving in that direction.
Speaker 3:And then my other experience on Rikers Island was running the Board of Correction, which is the oversight body for the jail system. So it's a small but mighty agency that has about 30 people three, zero people who are tasked with oversight of a jail system between the Department of Correction and Correctional Health Services, which is the medical provider about 9,000 employees, and so the board sets minimum standards this is local law regulations that the system is to adhere to and then monitors to those regulations. And I was leading the Board of Corrections during the pandemic. So I was there from January of 2020 to January of 2022. And it was an absolutely hellish time. I mean, the place is hellish to begin with, just exponentially worse for everyone, and I have never been more convinced that the island needs to close. Those jails need to close the minimum standards.
Speaker 3:The initial standards were written in the 1970s. There have been a few new sections of local law that are definitely more recent, but the core standards, the sort of basic standards, the medical standards, the mental health standards all date back to the 70s and 80s. It's wild, and the standard of care and best practice has changed dramatically. So I think there is also as part of this conversation and really thinking about what this new system should look like from an organizational culture standpoint, which is absolutely essential. You can't just move the department as it exists now into these new jails. You really need to think about how the regulations that are at play, and New York is unique in having this body, and so we should take advantage of that and make sure that it is as strong as possible to guide the department and the city and really protect the people again, both people in custody and staff and ensure that they have humane and supportive conditions to live and work in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's so many policies that need to be reformed. Do you have any other specific ones that you want to point out that are really important to change and urgent now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think one of the real challenges for the city is in the plan to close Rikers which I think can happen for sure is doing everything that we can to ensure we just don't move the problem of Rikers into the borough-based jails. We shouldn't be creating four new buildings with the exact same problems, and so that requires intense and long-term organizational culture change. Being clear on the mission what is the point of the jail system? What are we trying to do? What is the goal? And then how are we hiring and managing and operating the jail system towards that vision and goal? And, from my vantage point at WPA again, how are we intentionally providing care to women in the system?
Speaker 3:There are about 500 women on Rikers Island right now. They need different care than the other 6,500 men and we should be thoughtful and intentional about that, and we're moving in that direction. We're increasing our work on the island to focus on transition planning and substance use support for women at Rosie's and continue to provide our community-based work. So we are working on it, but I think that really needs to be an intentional focus, and this is, you know, this is how the city should also focus its funding. A budget is a statement of policy priorities. Right, so there needs to be more support for organizations like WPA and our partners who do this incredible work on the island and in the community every day.
Speaker 2:How do you notice that the funding landscape has shifted at all?
Speaker 3:It has definitely improved every budget cycle. So the city's fiscal year starts on July 1st. The city council and the mayor are in the middle of budget negotiations now. The mayor announced in his executive budget that heTI really robust ATI and reentry and housing and mental health like all of that support has a much stronger return on investment than Rikers Island right, Than the jails, and so there's definitely an opportunity to increase that funding and that level of care and support for people in the community. Again, I see it as a public safety response. I also see it as an economic development response. Right, If you are supporting organizations and people in the community, they're spending money in those communities and strengthening those communities. Supporting organizations and people in the community, they're spending money in those communities and strengthening those communities, and so I think for the city as a whole it's a really, really smart long-term investment.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for all of your knowledge. It's been really insightful. Is there anything else you'd like to add, and is there any message you want to convey to anybody who's listening?
Speaker 3:I think the only thing I would add is I mean, it's not really adding, it's more repeating that there is a real and meaningful opportunity, in sort of the broader reform conversation, to center on women and what both the opportunity and I like to focus on the opportunity rather than the challenges the opportunity to strengthen families and communities by providing that intentional support. Again, because the negative impact is so great and has such a long-term impact. I think that can get lost in the shuffle and so, yeah, that's what I would beg, I guess, people to remember.
Speaker 1:That's it for part two of our conversation with Meg Egan, the CEO of the Women's Prison Association. Across both episodes, we've heard what it means to build alternatives to incarceration that are rooted in care, not control. We've explored the ripple effects of criminalisation on women, lgbtqia plus people, families and communities, and how a more just response must centre healing, housing, dignity and accountability. Wpa's work shows us what's possible when we listen, when we ask not just how did you end up here, but what do you need to truly thrive? It's a reminder that the criminal legal system doesn't just need reform, it needs reimagining, and that real justice means investing in people, not just prisons. Justice means investing in people, not just prisons.
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