After ten years in prison, Monica Cooper now fights on behalf of incarcerated women.

Monica Cooper is busy. Her phone is buzzing. She never turns it off. The Baltimore native gets calls from people who are in trouble. People who are accused of murder, who can’t pay their rent and don’t know what to do after getting out of prison.

“I love human beings so much that I’m afraid if I turn my phone off, then I might miss an opportunity to help,” she said in a Zoom interview. She is wearing a baseball cap and a red T-shirt.

Cooper herself spent ten years in prison. Now, she fights for the rights of Maryland prisoners, especially those of incarcerated women. Female prisoners, she says, are often ignored and discriminated against. She aims to lift them up.

Joyce White, 64, is one of them. She met Cooper in prison over 20 years ago. Even while incarcerated, Cooper advocated for fellow prisoners, White remembers.

When White was released last August, Cooper visited her. “She came to hug me and cry,” White says in a phone interview.

Women make up 3.3% of prisoners in Maryland state prisons, according to the most recent statistics. Cooper believes they are punished twice: For the crime they committed and for “not staying in your lane and living up to the patriarchal view of what a woman should be.”

Since Cooper launched the Maryland Justice Project in 2013, she has lobbied for a pre-release unit for women that would offer job-training, allow prisoners to leave for outside work and provide high school equivalency certificates, among other services. The nine Maryland units that prepare prisoners to be released serve only men.

In 2020, Maryland lawmakers passed legislation to establish a new pre-release center for women. It was supposed to start operating before November 2023, but female prisoners are still years away from being able to access these services, according to budget documents by the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which calls the legislative plan “tremendously accelerated.”

This is more evidence, Cooper says, for something she already knows. Women’s issues have historically been addressed insufficiently in all areas. “It is the same in corrections.”

Cooper grew up in Sandtown-Winchester, a Baltimore neighborhood the New York Times called “depressed for decades.” Three percent of the population is incarcerated, whole blocks are uninhabited, and houses are falling apart.

Cooper has faced the same difficulties of those she helps today. “I know what it’s like to have parents that have substance abuse issues. I know what it’s like to grow up in those communities,” she says. Early on, she knew that the conditions her family and neighbors lived in weren’t normal. 

A tragic accident led to her calling to help her community.

When Cooper was around 8 years old, a car hit and killed a classmate named Michelle. Cooper was overwhelmed by guilt. She used to bully Michelle, chase her home. In her mind, Michelle’s death was her fault. 

If Michelle hadn’t been bullied, maybe she wouldn’t have run in front of the cars trying to get away. “Sometimes I cry thinking about it now,” Cooper says, tearing up.

From that point on, she would step in whenever she saw bullying.

Growing up, she didn’t have a concrete plan about how she wanted to help those around her. She didn’t have the luxury to plan a career, she says, but lived day by day. One day, she had food on the table. One day, the lights were on.

Cooper’s life changed in 1997. She was incarcerated at the Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup, Maryland. Cooper prefers not to talk about the conviction that led her to spend a decade behind bars. As hard as it was, Cooper considers her time in prison a moment of opportunity to think about what she wanted to do with her life. She decided she wanted to help build a community instead of tearing it down.

Ten years later, she was free. “I didn’t come out with no elaborate plan. I came out simply with a desire to serve my community,” Cooper says. She moved in with her family after she was released and didn’t need to worry about bills as she adjusted.

Cooper went on to earn a Wilson Presidential scholarship at the University of Baltimore and a bachelor’s degree in Administrative Human Service in 2012.

Still, with a criminal record, finding a job was hard. “I ended up sweeping the floor at Walmart somewhere with a bachelor’s degree,” Cooper says.

Shortly after founding the Maryland Justice Project, Cooper lobbied to “ban the box” on job applications asking if the applicant has a criminal history. A law banning that practice took effect in Baltimore in 2014 and statewide in 2020.

No matter if she is speaking to Baltimore youth on the street or a congressman, “she’s always Monica,” says Amanda Gray, 36, who began volunteering for the Maryland Justice Project in 2021. For about a year now, she’s been on the payroll, taking care of accounting and events.

Cooper has a way of charming people, Gray says. “At the end of the conversation, they will be shaking hands and joking.”

As much as Cooper gives of herself to help others, she doesn’t like talking about herself, Gray says: “You have to pull it out of her.”

“I won’t tell nobody when I was born,” Cooper says, laughing. “They be like, she old.” February, sometime in the 1970s, she adds.

There is still a lot Cooper wants to achieve. The pre-release unit for women is on that list. The Maryland Justice Project is working on legislation that would allow incarcerated women to bond with children during their first year of life.  

Thinking about her legacy, Cooper says she wants to leave people “more intelligent, more wise about the human condition, and how we can reduce incarceration and still create safe communities.”