“Andrea James, founder of Families for Justice as Healing (FJAH) together with many formerly incarcerated women helped spearhead the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act of 2017. Andrea polled numerous women from the National Council of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, (The Council) an organization she co-founded who’s members include a long list of women working to raise awareness to the plight of our current mass incarceration crisis. Formerly incarcerated women shared the most degrading aspects of incarceration, such as being shackled during childbirth, lack of proper medical care geared toward women, their inability to call their children because of exorbitant phone rates, and lack of feminine hygiene products, just to name a few. Those and other issues were passed on to Senator Cory Booker’s office, who, with Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Kamala Harris (D-CA), introduced the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act of 2017 (The Dignity Act).This critical legislation calls for specific changes in the way women in federal custody are treated.”