This report examines the distinct harms that women in custody experience during incarceration and highlights the ways in which correctional agencies’ COVID-19 restrictions are exacerbating those harms. The report recommends a set of gender-responsive approaches to COVID precautions in corrections facilities that would simultaneously strengthen public health and improve outcomes for women, their families, and communities.

As Chair and member, respectively, on the Travis County Sheriff’s Women’s Jail Advisory Committee in 2018, Michele and Alycia detail a vision for a reimagined, gender-responsive facility for women in custody at the Travis County Correctional Complex.

This article is designed to familiarize readers with the concept of prison oversight and to highlight some oversight models that exist both in the United States and abroad. Special reference is made to four groups of prisoners for whom the need for external scrutiny with regard to their treatment is critical: prisoners held in administrative segregation and other forms of isolation, prisoners who are particularly vulnerable to sexual assault, prisoners with mental and physical disabilities, and prisoners with serious medical needs.