Operation Restoration

Operation Restoration (OR) supports women and girls impacted by incarceration to recognize their full potential, restore their lives, and discover new possibilities. At OR, we focus on advocacy, education, economic mobility, and true economic equity for our staff, clients, and community. Our goal is to end the incarceration of women and girls. We advocate to remove financial and societal incentives for incarceration/detention and increase investments in social services, education, housing and healthcare for all people. OR’s staff works together to grow and maintain 15 distinct programs which include wrap-around services that address employment and housing insecurity, advocacy, and also a community bail fund that disrupts the entry point into the legal system. OR also firmly believes in providing educational opportunities that focus on early literacy through higher education. Every program and initiative that OR undertakes is led by formerly incarcerated women and designed in response to community needs. Our priorities and areas of focus are driven by women with direct experience of incarceration, which helps us define issues and design practical solutions to influence city and state public policy, and advocate for meaningful change state-wide and nationally. OR believes in shifting resources from incarceration to programs that provide critical resources to our communities and address the conditions that create injustice. OR advocates for policies that end criminal and civil penalties in relation to survival acts caused by poverty, systemic racism, unjust laws, and economic insecurity. OR also advocates for policies that address the immediate needs of formerly and currently incarcerated women, and require our institutions to provide remedies to pervasive social problems.