who we are
Our Members
Our members are made up of women and girls who are currently incarcerated or have been incarcerated on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands. The colonial systems used to cage us are the same systems developed to make the land theft and genocides of Indigenous peoples possible. We understand our experiences of state violence as entangled with the colonial project and for this reason we cannot do meaningful work without leadership from our Black sisters. We also understand that our race, and other intersecting identities produce specific experiences of violence that no other person outside that group can know. The knowledges and relationships we gain from respectfully acknowledging our differences, allow us to harness the richness of our collective expertise, informing not only the work we do in The Network, but also our work outside of it.
Aunty Vickie Roach
Vickie Roach is a Yuin woman, born to a Stolen Generations mother and then stolen herself. She is an incarceration survivor and activist in Victoria and New South Wales, Australia. In 2007, Vickie successfully brought a High Court of Australia challenge to legislation prohibiting people in prison from voting. She has completed a Masters of Writing (Swinburne University) and has written and spoken prolifically about the harms of prison and the need to change the system. Vickie is a founding member of the National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls (Australia), as well as a member of the steering group of Homes Not Prisons that is fighting against expansion of Dame Phyllis Frost women’s prison in Victoria. Across all her campaigning, Vickie is an ardent abolitionist. She believes the system is designed to break us and that the only path forward is to break the system.
Authored Works..
The system is not failing, It is working to harm First Nations People
Debbie Kilroy, OAM
One of Australia’s leading advocates for protecting the human rights of women and children through decarceration – the process of moving away from using prisons and other systems of social control in response to crime and social issues. After her release in 1992, Debbie established Sisters Inside, which advocates for the human rights of women in the criminal justice system and responds to gaps in the services available to them. Sisters Inside isn’t just another service provider: it is an organisation of women with shared experiences supporting each other to change their lives and change the system. Sisters Inside has won international recognition for its work and its unique structure which ensures it is driven by women with lived prison experience.
Authorised works..
Why we must abolish the prison system
Making Visible the Invisibalised Voices of Criminalised Women in Australia
A World Without Prisons – Living Black
Tabitha Lean
Tabitha is an abolition activist determined to disrupt the colonial project and abolish the prison industrial complex – and she’s filled with rage, channelling every bit of that anger towards challenging the colonial carceral state. Having spent almost two years in Adelaide Women’s Prison and a total of 18 months on Home Detention, Tabitha uses her lived prison experience to argue that the criminal punishment system is a brutal and too often deadly colonial frontier for her people. She believes that until we abolish the system and redefine community, health, safety and justice; her people will not be safe.
Authored Works..
Making Visible the Invisibalised Voices of Criminalised Women in Australia
Jasmine Barzani
Jasmine Barzani is a Rojhelati Kurdish troublemaker and a settler on Wurundjeri country. Her involvement in social movements spans almost a decade, including collaborating with groups such as Food Not Bombs, Needle n Bitch, HUSK, and Médecins Sans Frontières. Jasmine’s political roots stem from direct action and anarchist praxis which began in 2014 through her participation in anti-deportation pickets at the Broadmeadows immigration prison in Naarm. She supports both local and international anti-colonial and Indigenous Sovereignty movements and she is an active organiser agitating for PIC abolition and Dwelling Justice.
Authored works..