Ivy Woolf Turk, CPC

For anyone familiar with the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black,” the story of Ivy Woolf Turk might sound vaguely familiar. 

The Netflix series focused on an upper middle class white woman who finds herself plunged into the unsavory world of a women’s prison following her arrest on drug trafficking charges. 

For Woolf Turk, who found herself sentenced to five years in Danbury Federal Prison following her arrest for charges related to a $27 million Ponzi scheme and mortgage fraud in 2009, she says that the reality of women in prison is far worse than the streaming series could ever reveal. 

“I had lost my home, my reputation, friends … everything just blew-up in my life,” says Woolf Turk, who previously worked as a New York City real estate developer. 

Among the dark details of her time in prison included spending days in a 7×7 cell, enduring time in solitary confinement, as well as being subjected to strip searches and similar harsh treatments. 

“I take responsibility for what I did … I knew something illegal was happening, but I didn’t know the extent of what was going on.” [read more]

Isn't it astonishing how rapidly life can change?

In March 2020, our group meeting places were shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We were no longer able to gather as we did in 2019.

As our community came to grips with this, we all began to realise that . . . [read more]

2019 highlights that I’m proud to share with you include:

*We advocated on behalf of incarcerated women at the White House and at conferences all over the country for the First Step Act. The bill was passed on April 1st and continues to help many..

*We participated in the high-profile . . . [read more]

We doubled our impact by serving over 300 women directly and positively reaching hundreds of thousands more!

We continue to disrupt pathways to prison and
open doors to dignity and sustainable freedom for ALL women, as they discover that their . . . [read more]

Hi, my name is Jessica, and this is my daughter Victoria.

For years I felt like I couldn’t control what was happening in my life. My mother died when I was young, and I blamed myself for not taking better care of her. Years later, when I had a daughter . . . [read more]

Three years ago, we met Jessica in a shelter with her daughter Victoria. Today, she is reunited with her son also, and living in her own apartment.

In late July, she came to the Center for Social Innovation with other . . . [read more]

In 2017, Project Liberation helped restore dignity, self-worth, and hope to 206 women, which disrupted their pathways back to prison. With a national recidivism rate of over 50%, none of our participants have returned to prison.

Research shows . . . [read more]