"Prisons and People: A Focus on Women and Their Children"
Sponsored by The Portia Project
A daylong discussion which occurred in November, 2011, this conference included presenters and panelists, including administrators and former inmates of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, families of incarcerated women, social workers, criminal defense attorneys, human rights lawyers, and representatives of community agencies.
Robin Levi - Human Rights Director of Justice Now
A pre-conference reception was held on November 17 from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in the Lewis Lounge on the fourth floor of the School of Law. While the reception was in progress, two films describing the experiences of women who were pregnant and gave birth while they were in prison were screened. A Sentence for Two featured four Oregon women who bore children while incarcerated at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. Purdy featured a group of women who gave birth during their incarceration in the state of Washington -- and who were permitted to keep their newborn children with them in a special unit of the women’s prison.
Robin Levi, a California attorney who is the Human Rights Director of Justice Now and the co-editor of a recently published book entitled Inside This Place, Not of It, gave the keynote address.