Liman Program Submits a Statement to Task Force on Women in Detention

On March 2, 2015, the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School submitted a statement to the Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections. The statement submitted was titled “Women in Detention: The Need for National Reform.”

The Colson Task Force was established in 2014 “to address challenges in the Federal corrections system.” Its goal is to “develop practical, data-driven policy recommendations that can safely ‘right-size’ the federal prison system to ensure that prison is reserved for the most serious offenders and that all offenders are provided the support and supervision needed to become productive and law abiding citizens.”

“This Task Force can provide important leadership by exploring how the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, and age affects those in federal prisons,” reads the statement. “The bipartisan national agenda, committed to lowering incarceration rates and to offering individuals ‘second chances’ to build productive lives, needs to take up the issue of incarcerated women.”

The statement offered data on the placement of incarcerated women in the Federal correctional system and highlighted the challenges that distance poses to family relationship, religious community, and reentry planning.

The testimony was signed by Judith Resnik, the Arthur Liman Professor of Law and Johanna Kalb ’06, Director of the Arthur Liman Program and Visiting Associate Professor of Law. It was prepared with the assistance of Emma Kaufman ’15 and Anna Arons ’15.