Hi, I'm Anna Marie Cox. Welcome to With Friends Like These.

We've talked to a lot of people on this show about the problem of mass incarceration.

We're about to drop in a big missing piece in that conversation, the voice of a formerly

incarcerated person. A very special one at that. Ruby Welch is a restorative justice activist

and the founder and executive director of felon, formerly incarcerated and powered

leaders overcoming negative stigmas, which is a hell of an acronym. As an activist,

she helped put in place an Arkansas ban on the shackling of women during pregnancy and

child labor, which should not be a big deal. But it is. I loved talking to her. She's

a true force of nature and she's coming right up. Ruby, welcome to the show. Thank you so

much Miss Anna Marie, glad you invited me. So I want to start a little bit differently

than I usually do. I want to ask how you would like to be introduced. Who are you now?

How do you want people to know you? Who am I now? I am Ruby and Carter Welch, daughter

of Lynn Edward Carter, Rita Carter, sister of nine brothers and sisters, auntie, grandma,

stepmom, lover of the universe. Advocate, fighter for a criminal or restorative justice

rights. I mean, I'm just who I was created to be.

And I love that. I love that introduction. And if, and I even asked you is because I think

one of the important things that your activism does is remind people that the most important

thing about someone isn't whether or not they were formerly incarcerated, right? That's

not the most important thing about you. I would say being the person that the universe

created you to be is probably the most important thing about you. Now that said, you are a formerly

incarcerated person. Yes, ma'am. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how that came

to be? One thing that I always try to tell people is

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