Doing Our Time on the Outside

Barbara Allan's introduction to the prison system came after her husband murdered his own father. Before that, she had faced her husband's alcoholism, his violent episodes, and multiple attempts to protect herself and her two daughters. But it was her confrontation with the criminal-justice system that has stuck with her-for almost fifty years. Founder of Prison Families Anonymous, Barbara discovered early on that families of the incarcerated had to do their own time, struggling to navigate a system that ignored them and sometimes actively shunned them. This is her story