Normally nonprofit organizations hope for longevity; the Women’s Prison Association (WPA), set to celebrate its 175th anniversary next year, hopes its services will no longer be needed by its bicentennial. “We would really hope not to make it to 200, I’ll be honest. It would be great if we didn’t have to celebrate our 200th anniversary,” Diana McHugh, Communications Director at WPA, told the Bushwick Daily.

Since 1845, WPA has been serving the criminal justice-involved women of New York and their families. In WPA’s early days, its services focused on improving conditions for incarcerated women, like lobbying for the first women-only prison. 

“You look back now and you think, the growth of womens’ prisons has increased by almost 900 percent over the last two decades,” said McHugh. “In what way have we contributed to the mass incarceration of women? But 200 years ago, the context was pretty different. [We were] trying to look out for the safety of women, post-arrest.”