Preface

The manual you now have in your hands was produced for use in the prison advocacy training part of the Human Rights in Action (HRIA) project.

The HRIA project is dedicated to ensuring that the human rights of all prisoners are protected, especially those of women prisoners who are racialized and those with disabling mental health issues. The HRIA project vision is to increase our success in keeping and returning women to the community. The three groups involved in developing the project are also committed to working to decrease the use of prison and to developing release strategies for those who are currently incarcerated.

All of the project’s work is aimed at achieving substantive equality of/for women in and from prison. We work to address the inter-sectional, multi-dimensional oppression of women, and specific issues relevant to Aboriginal women.

The project is also about enabling women to survive prison and parole by reinforcing their own, pre-existing capacities and strengths. Our aim is to support individual women in and from prison to:

• create advocacy teams made up of current prisoners, ex-prisoners, and community people;
• have Federally Sentenced Women out of prison by their eligibility dates;
• reduce the number of Aboriginal women in the federal system by 10%;
• enable all women to stay out of prison once they are released;
• participate in coalitions that support human rights principles and goals at the local, regional, and national levels.