Soros Justice Fellowships

Family and Corrections Network

Dee Ann Newell will work in ten pilot sites across the country to promote policies and practices that effectively respond to the needs of children with incarcerated parents. In collaboration with the Rights to Realities Initiatives underway in these ten jurisdictions, she will produce a toolkit that describes promising strategies and policy changes that have been implemented in other jurisdictions.

Newell is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas. She received her undergraduate degree from Finch College in New York and received her master’s degree in developmental psychology from Columbia University in 1969. She served as a counselor for young adults from Asian-American communities of New York City during the early 1970s. In the mid-1970s, she returned to Little Rock and served as the headmistress of a progressive private school. In 1991, she volunteered as a parenting facilitator with the newly created Parenting from Prison program, serving the state’s 200 women prisoners where she was encouraged by the mothers in their parenting classes to look into the plight of their children and caregivers. Newell became the director of services for children of prisoners and their families and co-founded Arkansas Voices, which advocates for the rights and well-being of children with parents behind bars. She was the project director of one of the five Demonstration Sites for Children of Prisoners, federally funded by the Clinton Administration through the Department of Justice/National Institute of Corrections. Her program model, Family Matters, was identified in the National Council on Crime and Delinquency’s evaluation as the most promising model of services for children of prisoners.

Little Rock, AK |  One Year |