Photo courtesy of Tahlia Isaac Tahlia Isaac is a 35-year-old Australian Aboriginal criminologist and social justice advocate. She is on a mission to empower women as they reintegrate into society after incarceration. As the founder of the non-profit Project Herself, she directs her energies toward overcoming the special challenges that women encounter. This project especially focuses on Indigenous women, who make up an outrageous 37 percent of all female prisoners in Australia.
Isaac’s been through a lot on his own path. He struggled with addiction for more than 10 years, spending three years rotating through a revolving door of incarceration. At 29, that was the first time she experienced a police watch house. This was the beginning of a stormy journey, putting her in touch with extreme violence as well as her own self-destructive lifestyle. The very first time I walked into a police watch house, something inside me changed. I had finally become the greater threat to our community.
Indigenous women, some in the front lines of today’s justice system, are disproportionately affected by this horrifying reality. Indigenous youth are 21 times more likely to be incarcerated than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Isaac notes that these women are too often forgotten in the fight for women’s rights. This willful ignorance creates additional barriers to their successful reintegration into society.
In 2016, when Isaac left prison for the last time, she faced a critical choice: return to her previous destructive lifestyle or seek support from her mother. When most women leave prison, they do not have any housing to go back to. Nearly half of them experience homelessness upon release, re-entering society without any support system. Nearly 50 percent of women exiting prison become homeless, Isaac said. They’re released like I was, but with zero advance notice.
Isaac thinks that the prevailing move back to more punitive crime policies isn’t the answer. She argues that just building more spaces and toughening laws doesn’t confront the root conditions pushing people into criminal activity in the first place. If we continue the status quo of tough on crime, we will be contributing to the issue. Otherwise, we’ll only widen the gulf and perpetuate the very harm we’re seeking to avoid,” she continued.
As she continues to fight for a more just system, Isaac advocates for more robust support networks for women who are in danger. She envisions a world where every woman released from prison has someone waiting for them at the gate—a support network that includes housing, therapy, employment pathways, and community connections. What if every woman had somebody waiting at the gate,” she said. Imagine if stable housing, effective therapy, meaningful employment pathways, and healing community supports were the default, the expectation, even mandated through legislation.
Isaac’s advocacy goes beyond this one story, illustrating a systemic issue that urgently needs to be addressed. As a former psychiatrist at Rikers Island, she’s seen women in prison suffer from the systemic failures that plague women of color communities. I’ve come across whole prison wings of black women from the same isolated township. They are all having a hard time as they are not native English speakers,” she added. “These women are governed by lore, not L-A-W but L-O-R-E.
As part of Project Herself, Isaac is focused on helping formerly incarcerated women reclaim their lives after prison. It’s her belief that the moment women are released back home with a real chance at thriving there, they’re able to change their individual stories for good. In return, they make a deep difference within their families and community.
“Turning right wasn’t a comfortable decision for me either,” Isaac told CEOs, as she looked back on her own path to recovery and reinvention. I felt like I had to reconstruct everything from the ground up, beginning with my own identity. Her poignant testimony is a testament to the strength countless women of color embody when adversity calls.
