Research has indicated the stressors of incarceration for caregivers, including stigmatization, especially if their loved one’s crime was violent. Caregivers face symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD from the stigma and stress associated with having a loved one incarcerated.

We Are Better Together (WAB2G) Warren Daniel Hairston Project, an innovative grassroots organization in Boston, demonstrates the power of harnessing the collective experience and energy of caregivers affected by incarceration and violence to advocate for more supportive policies and programs.

Supporting Boston Caregivers affected by Incarceration and Violence

Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Strong Prison Wives and Families, and other national groups provide channels for support and advocacy for caregivers impacted by homicide and incarceration. Few local resources exist across the US, however, and caregivers’ voices are often excluded from policy and advocacy. Even fewer resources are culturally relevant and recognize the specific intergenerational trauma faced by Black families. All caregivers need programming and services, but the need is especially pronounced in the intersectional context of the experience of Black women and girls.

Black Americans are disproportionately impacted by gun violence, particularly homicide, and incarceration. Gun violence and incarceration are intertwined, with research suggesting that higher rates of incarceration of Black Americans may exacerbate gun violence in their communities. While one in two US adults has an immediate family member who has been incarcerated in jail or prison, Black adults are 50 percent more likely to experience the incarceration of an immediate family member than white adults. Moreover, Black women and girls, especially those in urban communities, are disproportionately affected by gun violence, not only as direct victims but also as caregivers and covictims who witness or lose loved ones to violence.

WAB2G is one of the few organizations of its kind in the US that supports caregivers impacted by homicide and incarceration. Inspired by the tragic loss of her son, Warren Daniel Hairston, Ruth Rollins established WAB2G to offer comprehensive assistance and education to families impacted by gun violence on both sides of the tragedy in the Boston area. Recognizing the shared trauma experienced by families of loved ones who cause harm and experience it, Rollins created a safe space for healing, advocacy, and empowerment. WAB2G advocates for and offers its services and supports to all caregivers, but most of the people served are Black women and girls, as they are disproportionally impacted by homicide and incarceration in the Boston area.

Listening Sessions: Envisioning Solutions Based on Lived Experience

WAB2G joined the fourth cohort of the Catalyst Grant Program to use data in creative ways toward a more equitable criminal legal system. The program recognizes the power of qualitative data, such as lived experience. As part of its Catalyst project, WAB2G facilitated a listening session to develop a policy advocacy framework for caregivers that placed their voices at the heart of the process. Its listening session was inspired by its research on the needs and experiences of caregivers.

Listening sessions are a more dynamic form of focus groups, emphasizing conversation and interaction among participants. The primary purposes of listening sessions are to gather input from participants that can shed light on the issues most pressing to them and potential policy recommendations. Facilitators use open-ended questions and activities to engage participants in building ideas and recommendations collectively to drive change.

WAB2G partnered with the Boston University School of Law’s Antiracism and Community Lawyering Practicum (which has expanded into the Racial Justice and Movement Lawyering Clinic) to facilitate the listening session. To develop the session, law students and their supervising attorney/professor, Caitlin Glass, engaged with frameworks outlined in We Power Policy’s participatory policymaking toolkit, a resource for those doing work around community-centered processes to create transformative change, counter to typical top-down policymaking. The team developed a listening session plan in structured sections with collaborative activities. The plan included the following:

• Personalize the discussion. The listening session started with background questions to understand participants’ journeys to becoming caregivers, including their motivations, challenges, and unique experiences.
• Surface alignment among participant experiences. To build on WAB2G’s research, the team asked participants to consider a statement summarizing that research and indicate areas of alignment and misalignment.
• Share current strategies and gaps. The team invited participants to share their current problem-solving strategies, which helped the group identify gaps in existing supports and services.
• Determine core values. The team used prior research and participants’ responses to codevelop a "North Star" vision to guide any potential policy solutions.
• Identify solutions. Participants brainstormed potential policy solutions and discussed specific approaches that would best address their needs, ensuring solutions were grounded in the lived experiences of caregivers. Then, based on WAB2G’s research, the team asked participants to comment on a list of potential policy ideas that might respond to caregivers’ needs.

Moving From Insights to Action

The listening session culminated in the codevelopment of a “Caregiver's Bill,” an outline for a state bill articulating the following collective priorities and vision for systemic change:

• financial support for caregiving expenses
• access to trauma-informed programming, including mental health counseling support and support navigating the criminal legal process for impacted family members
• legal rights and supports for people caring for an incarcerated loved one’s children, including the following: reduced barriers to temporary guardianship/custody during a loved one’s incarceration, reduced barriers to contact between incarcerated loved ones and their children, and kinship care stipends or tax credits

The listening session allowed for an action-focused discussion among people directly impacted by gun violence and incarceration, who are often neglected and unheard in policy decisionmaking. Using structured sections with collaborative cumulative activities was an effective strategy for helping the caregivers create the bill outline. WAB2G plans to advance this work by submitting the Caregiver Bill in the next Massachusetts legislative session.