Exploring Technical Violations with Women: Reasons, Responses & Alternatives

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Alyssa Benedict, MPH has over 20 years of experience working to improve policies and practices with justice involved women, and specializes in the design and implementation of gender responsive, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive policies and practices. She the founder and Executive director of CORE Associates and co-founder of the Women’s Justice Institute. Alyssa has specialties in the neurobiology and ecology of trauma and resilience, and organizational development, and has provides comprehensive training and technical assistance to policy makers, administrators, managers and staff throughout the justice continuum, helping them to integrate multi-disciplinary and international knowledge. Alyssa has authored, co-authored and contributed to various publications, models and resources designed to support justice practitioners, including the Gender Informed Practices Assessment (GIPA), a cutting-edge national tool that assesses a facility’s integration of gender responsive, evidence-based policies and practices with justice-involved women, and the Women’s Justice Assessment (WJA), a dynamic gender responsive jail and local justice system assessment. Alyssa is an expert in policies and practices with justice-involved women and girls, and has extensive implementation experience, including multi-site statewide initiatives and specialized approaches in juvenile and adult facility and community corrections.

Deanne Benos, WJI Co-Founder. A specialist in systems change strategies, Deanne Benos brings experience as a former top criminal justice policy advisor to the White House Domestic Policy Council, as well as the first woman in history to serve as the Assistant Director of the $1.2 billion Illinois Department of Corrections. Benos was credited with successful promotion of evidence-based practices and justice reinvestment strategies, as well as the advancement of gender responsive training, policies and practices within the department. In this role, she launched one of the nation’s first prison nurseries for women, expanded evidence-based, trauma-informed programs in every women’s facility, and spearheaded a major women’s reentry parole reform initiative that reduced recidivism. Benos is also the President of Open Road Policy, a public affairs firm which has provided management consulting services to state correctional agencies across the country, consulted for the National Institute of Corrections, and was contracted by a major social services provider to facilitate implementation of a major pretrial housing diversion program for women released from one of the largest jails in the country.