Breaking the Cycle with Marilynn B. Winn

By Estelle Jar­rett | UConn Jour­nal­ism
Feb­ru­ary 27, 2024

“There’s noth­ing you can tell me about the sys­tem and how it oper­ates,” says for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed Mar­i­lynn B. Winn. “I have expe­ri­enced it, I have lived it, breathed it, ate it, slept on it—I’m a part of it.” 

At 17 years old, Win­n’s involve­ment in shoplift­ing led to her first encounter with the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem: her first two year sen­tence of sev­en in her life­time. In con­cen­trat­ed pover­ty areas in inner-city Atlanta, shoplift­ing was a means of nav­i­gat­ing the chal­lenges of every­day life. Grow­ing up as a black girl in 1960s Geor­gia, she learned ear­ly on the harsh real­i­ties of pover­ty and how it led to a cycle of being shut away in Atlanta City Deten­tion Cen­ter (ACDC). 

Winn was an only child in a sin­gle par­ent home where her moth­er worked two jobs and her father died in the Army. While she was out all day mak­ing ink pens for Scrip­to and bussing tables, Winn was either by her­self or with her grand­moth­er. Winn’s grand­moth­er used to tell her to grab some­thing from the store and hide it before get­ting to the counter. Her grand­moth­er lived on a plan­ta­tion in Geor­gia as a slave and had sur­vived by steal­ing from the “big house,” accord­ing to Winn.

This is where Winn’s habit start­ed. It was food, then dolls, clothes and start­ed to mate­ri­al­ize into oth­er things. Winn describes her younger self as a lon­er, but she would hang around the boys in the neigh­bor­hood who also stole often.

Her moth­er did not know about the steal­ing until Winn’s first arrest. She’d been angry with her, but she couldn’t stop Winn’s habit at this point in her devel­op­ment. “White kids will go to a psy­chi­a­trist to fix behav­ioral prob­lems– you go to juve­nile as a black kid,” said Winn in a 2020 inter­view with the Cen­ter for Civic Inno­va­tion.

When Winn first went to prison at 17, it was in the form of a Chain Gang back then which refers to the prac­tice of a group of peo­ple chained togeth­er to per­form menial or phys­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing work as a form of pun­ish­ment. This sys­tem oper­at­ed well through the 1950s in Geor­gia. War­dens, or the peo­ple in charge of super­vis­ing the Chain Gangs with point­ed guns, only had third and fourth grade edu­ca­tion and the pris­ons were seg­re­gat­ed at the time.

“I nev­er want­ed to expe­ri­ence that again. But, when I came home, I thought I’d get jobs like my friends, but I had a record. Employ­ers don’t take the time to see what you were arrest­ed for.”

Winn could not get hired for a job, so she went back to steal­ing in order to sur­vive, but would get arrest­ed for it many times. She began to lie about her record on job appli­ca­tions and was final­ly hired. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, infor­ma­tion about her past incar­cer­a­tion sur­faced and she would be fired.

With each brush with the law came the real­iza­tion that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was ill-equipped to address the root caus­es of her behav­ior, per­pet­u­at­ing a cycle of pover­ty and incar­cer­a­tion that seemed impos­si­ble to escape.

“No one ever asked me why do you keep doing this? And all I can say is I need­ed a job,” Winn said in a 2022 inter­view with 11Alive.

Being born and raised in the inner-city of Geor­gia, she knew there are road­blocks for peo­ple of col­or. Peo­ple get stopped by the police and arrest­ed because they couldn’t afford to buy a decal, car insur­ance or for a bro­ken tail­light. “These are not crimes wor­thy of prison,” Winn assert­ed. “Every time you get fin­ger­print­ed into that jail, you’ve just received a life sen­tence, no mat­ter what you did.”

It’s true that Atlanta’s city jail holds low lev­el offend­ers. Accord­ing to the jail’s 2020 records, the most com­mon offense in the jail is for dri­ving with a sus­pend­ed license, with 1,019 peo­ple impris­oned for it in 2020. Winn her­self was incar­cer­at­ed there mul­ti­ple times for dri­ving on a license that she hadn’t real­ized was sus­pend­ed and once jailed 30 days when she couldn’t pay a $100 fine.

On her 7th prison sen­tence, she told a judge she need­ed some­thing dif­fer­ent. In a piv­otal moment of courage, she stood before Judge Wal­ter Lovett dur­ing one of her court appear­ances and said, “You keep send­ing me to prison, and it’s not going to work. I’m going to come back and steal some more because I don’t have a choice in the mat­ter,” accord­ing to a 2019 inter­view with South­ern Cen­ter for Human Rights.

She then pro­ceed­ed to explain how she’d lied to obtain 18 sep­a­rate jobs she couldn’t keep, show­ing the judge her social secu­ri­ty doc­u­ments to prove it. Dur­ing her fourth stint in prison, Winn had become addict­ed to drugs, but man­aged to get clean dur­ing the peri­od of time she had a job and was out of prison.

Judge Lovet­t’s response was a turn­ing point in Win­n’s life. He offered her a life­line by send­ing her to Account­abil­i­ty Court which is a court pro­gram that pro­vides an alter­na­tive to tra­di­tion­al crim­i­nal jus­tice pun­ish­ment and pro­vides sup­port. Winn seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty and found employ­ment at a staffing com­pa­ny, final­ly get­ting the sta­ble job she’d been plead­ing for.

Winn thrived with First Step Staffing — a non-prof­it, alter­na­tive staffing orga­ni­za­tion – and worked her way up to be on the board of direc­tors. This kick­start­ed the exten­sive work Winn would pro­vide the coun­try and her com­mu­ni­ty. In 2014, ​​she’d receive the Inspire Award from First Step Staffing for her achieve­ments in Com­mu­ni­ty Activism. 

Winn didn’t stop there. She went on to co-found Women on the Rise, a grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion advo­cat­ing for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform and reduc­ing the num­ber of women under cor­rec­tion­al con­trol in the state of Geor­gia. This orga­ni­za­tion nur­tures Atlanta, but their reach is local, state-wide and nation­al due to their part­ner­ships with orga­ni­za­tions all around the globe. One of the many inten­tions of Women on the Rise is to pro­vide sup­port groups and wel­come home pack­ages for those who have recent­ly been released. 

The impact of Women on the Rise is dis­played in the many awards Winn has received since start­ing her work. In 2019, Winn was the Cham­pi­on for Change Hon­oree for Wash­ing­ton D.C.’s Salute Her Awards. In 2021, Winn was award­ed the John R. Lewis Life­time Achieve­ment Award from the Cen­ter of Civic Inno­va­tion for her work with Women on the Rise.

She was also the Lead Orga­niz­er for 9to5’s ini­tia­tive to Ban the Box. Ban the Box referred to the ques­tion on employ­ment appli­ca­tions ask­ing about pri­or felony con­vic­tions, the part in the hir­ing process that pre­vent­ed Winn from sus­tain­ing a job. Atlanta made his­to­ry by being the first city in the south to ban the box on their employ­ment appli­ca­tions.

Nation­al­ly, Winn’s efforts have been rec­og­nized by the White House. Winn was a nom­i­nee for the Unit­ed States of Women Sum­mit in 2016. She also served as a Jus­tice Votes Pres­i­den­tial Town Hall del­e­gate in 2020 and lat­er was invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in con­ver­sa­tion with mem­bers of the Biden-Sanders Uni­ty Task Force on Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Reform. She’s also been rec­og­nized by Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter and First Lady Rose­lynn Carter for her work to end employ­ment dis­crim­i­na­tion in 2014, and became a JustLead­er­ship USA 2016 Fel­low. 

Today, Winn still lives in Atlanta, GA with her rot­tweil­er, Sassy. At 72 years old, she remains stead­fast in her activism, ded­i­cat­ing her­self dai­ly to the caus­es cham­pi­oned by Women on the Rise and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions she sup­ports. As Winn said, she knows the prison sys­tem inti­mate­ly. Her par­ents and grand­par­ents worked on plan­ta­tions and she has expe­ri­enced first­hand the dehu­man­iz­ing con­di­tions of incar­cer­a­tion and being on the line of a Chain Gang when she’d been only a teenag­er. Despite all this, Winn has bro­ken this cycle with her unwa­ver­ing resolve to turn an unjust sys­tem into some­thing bet­ter.

This sto­ry was report­ed and pro­duced as part of an intern­ship with Wit­ness to Mass Incar­cer­a­tion.