From NBII Studios, this is Truth and Justice, a crowdsourced investigation in real time.

I'm Bob Roth.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Truth and Justice.

For today's episode, continuing on with our theme for season 16, where we're highlighting people that are doing good work in the space in the criminal justice system.

I have a special guest on today.

Her name is Raylene Baker, and she is a program director with the OSTARA initiative.

And Raylene, I was just explaining to Erica, my research assistant, exactly what the Osterra

initiative does, and I butchered stumbling through it. So I'm just going to let you introduce,

because you do some really unique work, and it's really important work that I don't think anybody thinks of. So I'm going to let you introduce yourself and share with us

what your initiative does and then we'll get into all the good work you're doing. Awesome. All right.

Thanks, Bob, for having me on. I'm really excited to share with your listeners what it is we do in the

space of criminal justice work. space of, you know,

criminal justice work. And so as you said, my name is Raylene Baker. I have been a doula in

the community in the Twin Cities area for about 20 years now. And going on close to 15 years ago,

got into the area of working with parents who were incarcerated,

experiencing pregnancy and parenting during an incarceration. And from there, we've been able

to grow our organization to now house several different Dula programs throughout the country.

So if your listeners aren't familiar with

what a Dula is, it's a non-medical support person, specifically to people who, working with people

who are pregnant and postpartum, generally up to one year postpartum. So we provide informational

support, physical support, and emotional support to those experiencing

a pregnancy, especially as a prison dula during an incarceration and post incarceration.

...