Our Story

Poetic Justice began with a writing workshops offered by Claire Collins and Ellen Stackable in the women’s pod of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s county jail.

Poetic Justice held its first class at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center, Oklahoma’s largest women's prison. Today, we are also at Eddie Warrior Correctional Center and three county jails in Oklahoma.

Classes began at Las Colinas Detention & Reentry Facility in San Diego, California and at La Esperanza in Tijuana, Mexico. Today we are also at the California Institution for women and three locations in Mexico.

In March, the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for us to continue in-person programming.  Within a week of the prisons shutting down to volunteers, we created our Distance Learning program. Due to the success and need of this, it continues to thrive.

Poetic Justice began in the state of Oregon as we started classes at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, which is the only women's prison in the state of Oregon.

The first photographs for Voices On The Inside were taken at the California Institution for Women. The exhibit of this show in Tulsa, Oklahoma led to the Oklahoma Department of Correction allowing this project to expand to facilities in Oklahoma. The project continues to travel across the nation.

In October, we began in-person classes at the Central California Women's Facility in Northern California, which is the second largest women's facility in the US.