‘This is our house’: Reclamation Center connects women leaving prison to services, emotional support

CHICAGO -- A crowd of parole and probation officers had assembled, filling in couches and chairs around a conference table in the sunny office space with exposed brick walls and high ceilings in the decidedly hip Lacuna Lofts building in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood.

Colette Payne stood at the stage with a mic in her hand and a wide smile on her face.

“Welcome to the Women’s Justice Institute,” she said, then pausing for a few seconds.

“This,” she said to applause, “is our house.”

Payne, a director at the institute, and the other women there had spent decades inside the Illinois prison system. But on a recent day, parole and probation agents from across the country — including the head of the women’s parole unit in the Illinois Department of Corrections — were at the institute’s newly opened Reclamation Center for a presentation by Payne and other formerly incarcerated women who run the center.

Lynette Faulkner, commander of the female division for the IDOC parole unit, joined the women on the panel. Faulkner’s office works with the institute developing approaches and interventions for women leaving prisons as well as gender-responsive training for