Women and Justice: What We Know, Where We’ve Been and Where We Need to Go

Go Back

Benedict is a psychologist and public health practitioner with a subspecialty in the neurophysiology and ecology of trauma and resilience. The Executive Director of CORE Associates, she has 20+ years supporting system and agency level healing, growth, and transformation by promoting evidence-based and innovative approaches with women and girls, amplifying lived experience, and promoting inclusive and intersectional frameworks. Benedict has worked across the U.S. to promote gender responsive, culturally attuned and trauma-informed care, has served as an architect and core faculty for various national initiatives, and has authored and co-authored impactful publications, models, and staff training curricula, including NIC’s Supervision Agency Gender-Responsive Evaluation (SAGE), and the widely implemented trauma-informed staff communication model Creating Regulation and Resilience (CR/2™). Benedict is co-founder of the Women’s Justice Institute (WJI), a “think and do tank” building transformational justice across sectors with the goal of ending women’s mass incarceration, co-author of WJI’s groundbreaking report “Redefining the Narrative,” and co-creator of the Women’s Justice Pathways Model (WJP©) and other tools designed to support dynamic, cross-sector work. CORE and the WJI’s work continues to inform efforts to improve justice and behavioral health with women and communities, and has been featured at various state, national, and international conferences.

Bree Boppre is a senior research associate in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Her work focuses on how victimization, adversity, and trauma contribute to pathways through the criminal legal system and the impacts of incarceration on families. With more than 10 years of applied research experience, Boppre has led several evaluation studies focused on community and juvenile correctional programs and sentencing policies, with a focus on addressing gendered, racial, and ethnic disparities in admissions and outcomes. She uses qualitative, quantitative, and community-engaged approaches. Boppre has authored more than 50 publications, including 20 peer-reviewed journal articles in outlets such as Justice Quarterly, Crime and Delinquency, and Criminal Justice and Behavior. She has been nationally recognized for her scholarship by the American Society of Criminology Division of Feminist Criminology. Before joining Urban, Boppre worked in higher education as tenure-track faculty in Sam Houston State University’s Department of Victim Studies, where she continues to teach as an adjunct professor. Boppre earned her BA from the University of Nevada, Reno; MS from Portland State University; and PhD from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Sandra Brown is the Director of Training at the Women’s Justice Institute, a national trainer and consultant with CORE Associates, an instructor at Millikin University, a doctoral student, and a poet and activist. She also served 22 years as an incarcerated survivor in the Illinois Department of Corrections. Despite challenges to accessing higher education in prison, Brown became the first incarcerated woman in Illinois to earn an academic master’s degree and the first to be accepted into an academic doctoral program. Brown’s experience underscores her work as a student, educator, researcher, activist, and creative writer. Brown's publications include a collection of works featured in “Critical Storytelling from Behind Invisible Bars: Undergraduates and Inmates Write Their Way Out.” Her self-published poetry memoir, “Odyssey in Progress,” was published in 2022. In December of 2022, Brown’s empowerment journey was featured in The Chicago Tribune. Illinois Humanities also features some of Brown’s work in its workbook, “Envisioning Justice RE: ACTION.” She is a two-time recipient of the Davis-Putter Scholarship, which provides grants to students actively working for peace and justice, and the Marilyn Buck Award.