Women's Prison Association
Abigail Hopper Gibbons became involved in a variety of social reform movements. For twelve years in New York, she was also president of a German industrial school for street children.
In 1845, she and her father founded the Women's Prison Association (WPA) of New York City. She lobbied the city government for improvements in the city's prisons, advocated the hiring of police matrons, and urged the construction of separate prisons for women, as they were housed in the same facilities as men. She frequently visited the various prisons in and about New York.
Under her leadership, in 1853 the Women's Prison Association separated from its parent, the Prison Association, and Gibbons obtained a New York State charter for her group. She led an aggressive program of legislative lobbying at the city and state level to improve prison conditions for women. She protested jail overcrowding and demanded that women prisoners be searched only by female matrons.
Read more about this topic: Abigail Hopper Gibbons
Famous quotes containing the words women, prison and/or association:
“I have told my husband that if he denies women equality, I will be in the vanguard of women on the streets, protesting outside his office in the new Palestinian state.”
—Suha Tawil (b. 1963)
“Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they’re taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.”
—French National Assembly. Declaration of the Rights of Man (drafted and discussed August 1789, published September 1791)