Allison Hastings

Allison Hastings (she/her) is a project director at Activating Change, where she works to promote healing and dignity behind and beyond bars. For more than 15 years, she has led efforts to address sexual abuse and victimization of currently and formerly incarcerated people. She accomplishes much of her work through Activating Change’s partnership with the National PREA Resource Center (PRC), a Department of Justice-funded organization dedicated to supporting efforts to end sexual abuse in confinement. For over a decade, Allison has managed the organizational partnership with the PRC, developed resources, provided technical assistance to many correctional facilities, and served as faculty for virtual and in-person trainings. From 2016 to 2020, she also served a technical assistance lead for the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC)-funded Resource Center for Reaching Victims. In that capacity, she oversaw the Resource Center’s body of work related to crime victims with incarceration histories. Prior to joining Activating Change, Allison spent over 15 years at the Vera Institute of Justice working to eliminate sexual abuse in jails and prisons and improve conditions of confinement, including reducing the use of solitary confinement.

In all of her projects, Allison seeks to uphold the humanity and reduce the suffering of people who are incarcerated, particularly those who have disabilities and those who are Deaf. She holds a Master of Science in Justice, Law and Society from American University and a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in English from Southern Methodist University.