Tahlia Isaac

You've got to think about your relationships, your identity, your community, where you're going to live, what you have to do with your kids, all of the medical things you've got to catch up on or dental or, you know, what work, what education.

So there's like so many different aspects of being released.

But when you get out, they're all competing for your attention.

Yeah, we have a journal.

So we go in with the journal and resources and we sit down with groups of women and we do peer mentoring with groups of women and we give them the journal that basically prompts them to start thinking about what it looks like to get out of prison.

Yeah, the first time I ever went into a prison and then could walk out again, it was surreal, like really surreal.

Yeah, and just seeing kind of the other side, I think, is a bit surreal and having different relationships with people who operate in the corrections system.

But, you know, some prisons don't give us access and others welcome us because they understand the power of peer mentoring.

Yeah, I mean, prisons are a place where they have a high risk profile.

It's like risk adverse, more risk adverse than the police.

Like it's very risk adverse.

And so when you're thinking about who it is they're going to let back in to have unvetted access to things, they're thinking about all the risks that come with that.

So I understand.

But ultimately, like I haven't been in crime in seven years.

Yeah.

I haven't touched a drug.

committed an offence.

I don't even know anyone.

I'm not even crime adjacent anymore.

We live in different suburbs.