RestoreHER US.America Inc (RestoreHER) is a policy advocacy reentry organization led by and for justice-involved women of color, based in Georgia. RestoreHER addresses the social determinants of criminalization and intersectionality of social inequities through education, leadership, and policy change to protect the dignity, reproductive justice, and restore the rights of all women directly impacted by incarceration, convictions, and/or trauma. Our mission is to enhance the lives of directly impacted women and work in partnership with those women to end the vicious cycle that leads to mass incarceration for women of color and pregnant women in the south. RestoreHER believes that policy advocacy is a stapler of the diversion and reentry process in that, policy change is imperative to eradicate intersectionality and the social determinants of criminalization that prompt confinement and unsuccessful reentry, leading to correctional control and increased recidivism which both feed mass incarceration. We address these issues within the criminal justice system and in the reentry process through policy advocacy by ensuring that marginalized women lead the conversations with access to resources, programming, and the support needed to overcome the challenges related to incarceration and its collateral consequences. RestoreHER acknowledges that directly impacted women are the “experts” utilizing the methodology and research we term “the participatory process” to create an infrastructure and build capacity forming a framework for harm reduction as well as dismantle oppressive laws and systems locally, statewide, and nationally through education, advocacy, and women’s leadership. RestoreHER educates directly impacted women through a comprehensive wellness and rehabilitative curriculum. Our efforts in advocacy include mobilizing justice-involved women through a grassroots approach and placing them in the forefront spearheading the changes needed to empower their leadHERship.
