From college-in-prison programs to job training, women are building futures that punishment alone was never designed to create.
This story is part of “Breaking the Cycle,” a three-part Ms. series on how women impacted by incarceration are building new futures—from education and job training, to debate teams and book clubs inside jails. Later this week: how women behind bars are finding their voices in public debate, and building community through literature.
Standing at the bottom of the steps, waiting for her name to be called, Stephanie King took a deep breath. She was ready to walk across the stage at Tulane University and receive her diploma.
“At that moment, I knew it was a bigger deal than I had allowed myself to believe,” she told Ms.
King was 63 years old. She had spent 27 years, seven months and 24 days in prison. She had never attended a graduation ceremony outside a corrections facility. As a teenager, she dropped out of high school after becoming pregnant. It would be 13 years before she obtained her high school diploma—and that was in jail.
“I just wanted to walk across that stage,” she says.
I knew that the answer to breaking the cycle … was going to come through education.
Stephanie King
King was the first person to graduate from the college-in-prison program offered by Tulane University and Operation Restoration, a Louisiana-based organization that provides education, housing and other resources to women impacted by the criminal justice system.
Syrita Steib, who herself spent nearly 10 years in prison, started the organization in 2016. Upon her release in 2009, she found no reentry resources specifically for women in New Orleans. She applied to college and was initially denied after disclosing her conviction. Two years later, she reapplied without revealing that history; she was accepted.
While completing her degree to become a clinical lab scientist, Steib applied for a lab assistant license. As part of her licensing application, she once again had to disclose her conviction history. But the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners considers each case individually and, fortunately, several of her professors were on the board. Her conviction was not held against her.
Female incarceration increased by more than 600 percent between 1980 and 2023. While women and girls make up approximately 10 percent of the nation’s imprisoned population, they have far fewer opportunities than their male counterparts—both inside and upon release.
For years, Louisiana was considered the nation’s “prison capital.” There, efforts to reduce incarceration largely focused on Black men and boys. Steib founded Operation Restoration to address this gender disparity, and it’s one of a growing number of programs across the nation serving women impacted by the justice system.
Steib graduated college. She became a clinical laboratory scientist. She started a family.
She also joined the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, a network of justice-impacted women advocating for state and federal policy changes. Through the council, she met Vivian Nixon, a formerly incarcerated woman and then-executive director of College and Community Fellowship, which works to help justice-impacted women in New York City pursue higher education, and assists formerly incarcerated women in other cities working on reentry.
Meeting women in these nonprofits gave Steib blueprints for how to create a nonprofit that addresses women’s incarceration in Louisiana in ways that are impactful, sustainable and long lasting.
Operation Restoration began with direct services, providing clothing for women returning home from incarceration and GED tutoring for women in jail and out in the community. By then, Steib was working in a supervisory role at a hospital. Whenever applicants checked the box disclosing their criminal history, she made sure to walk them through what to expect during the interview process and how to present themselves so that board examiners saw past their conviction.
From there, Steib’s organization grew to include a lab assistant training program open to women both inside prison and outside in New Orleans. It developed its Safety and Freedom Fund to post bail for people who could not afford it and to connect them with other resources needed while awaiting trial. The organization also joined advocacy efforts to remove barriers to reentry, including amending the question about criminal history on public college application forms.
In 2017, Operation Restoration began a partnership with Tulane University to offer college courses at the Louisiana Correctional Institution for Women in St. Gabriel, just south of Baton Rouge.
By then, King had already been imprisoned for more than 20 years. She had taken other courses at the prison, including a degree program offered by the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. But she knew that when she finally did walk out of the prison gates, she needed as many skills and as much education as she could get.
“I knew that the answer to breaking the cycle that I had been going in since I was 15 was going to come through education,” she says.
But getting an education in prison has a unique set of challenges. Students struggle to acquire basic supplies, like pens, calculators, paper, folders, notebooks, erasers and highlighters. Operation Restoration had to provide these—as well as textbooks.
Students cannot conduct their own research. Instead, they rely on Tulane students, who are sent lists of research requests written out on paper. Often what the women get in return isn’t what they were looking for. Once, King intended to write a paper about the disparity in educational programs in men’s and women’s prisons. But the materials she received weren’t what she needed, so she had to pivot to a different topic.
The actions of others, even if they aren’t enrolled in the program, affect the students as well. During a semester when students were studying movies and TV shows, a woman in the prison was caught watching a show on someone else’s tablet—a violation of the institution’s rules. In response, the prison removed movies from all prison tablets. The students and instructor managed to get through the rest of the class, but without access to the shows and films they had intended to watch and analyze.
In October 2023, King was released from prison. She had been in the middle of two classes and had nine more to go. Tulane allowed her to finish her classes online. Federal student aid paid for her tuition; Operation Restoration paid for her books and other materials. King, who was incarcerated in 1996 when beepers were the latest technology, had to learn 21st-century tools.
Lacking a computer, King figured out how to use her cell phone to Zoom into classes and turn in her papers. The professors worked to accommodate her, but she no longer had access to the peer support system she had built inside prison, where she and five other students in her housing unit frequently turned to each other with questions or for support. Outside, and in Baton Rouge—far from Tulane’s New Orleans campus—she had to figure out everything on her own. Still, if not for Operation Restoration, King wouldn’t have had that opportunity at all. Now approaching its 10th year, the organization reportedly provided 22,650 direct services and worked with 2,058 women from 2020 to 2024 alone.
M.D., who asked that only her initials be published, learned about Operation Restoration when her mother went to bail her out of jail. Members of the organization’s Safety and Freedom Fund paid M.D.’s bail. They also gave her mom information on the organization. When M.D. contacted them, she learned about the lab assistant program. (M.D.’s charges were later dropped.)
“I didn’t even know what [being a lab assistant] was,” she says.
Still, as a single mother, she knew she needed a career that paid better than what she earned as a restaurant hostess. Operation Restoration provided childcare, allowing her to bring her 3-year-old, who played while she learned.
M.D. says she was intimidated by some subjects, but her classmates motivated each other and the cohort learned together. After graduating, she was hired at a local hospital.
“She came in with green scrubs,” Steib recalls. “She was dancing, and she was so excited. That was such a drastic change from us bailing her out and her and her daughter living in this one room at her mom’s house.”
Later, M.D. was arrested again after her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend called the police on her. Operation Restoration not only bailed her out, but spoke with her hospital supervisors so that she didn’t lose her job.
They also spoke with M.D., encouraging her not to jeopardize the new life she had built.
“We had those tough conversations with her, like, ‘You can’t put yourself in that position for a man. You got to figure out how to control your emotions,’” Steib says. “She appreciated that we didn’t quit on her.”
M.D. attended an expungement workshop, applying to remove the arrest from her record. (She is currently awaiting the judge’s approval.)
Kendreka, who asked that only her first name be published, has never been incarcerated. But her children’s father cycled in and out of jail, leaving her to raise their two sons. During one of his absences, she lost her job. A friend told her about Operation Restoration and its lab assistant program.
“I had always wanted to be in the medical field,” Kendreka told Ms. But drawing blood scared her, so she never pursued that avenue.
She enrolled in the eight-week program and became a licensed lab assistant. She stopped juggling three jobs and instead found a position at a local hospital. The schedule is still grueling—12-hour shifts for seven days followed by seven days off work—but having every other week off allows her to spend time with her sons, now ages 10 and 12.
“If it wasn’t for Operation Restoration, I don’t know where I’d have ended up,” she says. “It has set me up to be where I am now.”
Part 1 of a three-part Ms. series; Parts 2 and 3 will publish Wednesday and Thursday. This article originally appears in the Winter 2026 print issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox.
