Healing versus vengeance | Elizabeth Gaynes | TED Goes to Prison at Coxsackie Correctional Facility
Channel: Delia Cohen
Date: 04/08/2023

America has an extraordinary addiction to punishment, so why don't U.S. crime victims feel better? Listen to the wise words of a woman who has been working in the criminal justice arena since the Attica Uprising in 1971. Elizabeth Gaynes served as the Osborne Association’s President and CEO before stepping down in April of this year. Over the course of her 38 years at Osborne, the organization grew from a staff of 3 to more than 300, with headquarters in the South Bronx, and program sites in Harlem, Brooklyn, Newburgh, Buffalo, and 30 NY prisons and jails, with programs that divert people from jail and prison, provide services for incarcerated people and their families during incarceration, and offer a wide range of reentry supports.  Liz is a nationally recognized expert on the impact of incarceration and reentry on children and families. Following the incarceration of her children's father in 1984, she designed FamilyWorks, the first comprehensive parenting program in a men’s state prison and the longest continually operating prison fatherhood program in the country. She serves on the Governor's Prison Redevelopment Commission, focused on the redevelopment and re-use of 12 closed upstate prisons. Osborne is near completion of the redevelopment of the former Fulton Correctional Facility, which will soon provide 135 beds for transitional reentry housing for older men returning to NYC after serving long prison terms.  Along with her daughter, Emani Davis, Liz was the first nominee from the Global North for the World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child for their work on behalf of children of incarcerated parents. Liz began her career as a defense attorney in connection with the 1971 Attica prison uprising. Before joining Osborne, she was a staff attorney at Prisoners Legal Services of New York and an Associate at the Pretrial Justice Institute in Washington, D.C.  Liz received her undergraduate and law degrees from Syracuse University.