In 1976, Pacific Center developed a new program to support sexual minority prisoners and recruited volunteers for the program over the course of 1976.
At the start of this podcast featuring activist Lenn Keller, she speaks to her experience as a volunteer in a related program, dating from the 1980s, that brought Pacific Center volunteers to Santa Rita jail. There, Keller recalled, many women prisoners asked her how it was possible to be a lesbian outside the walls of prison. According to Keller, some lesbians who spent time in the criminal-justice system felt that their communities, upon their release from prison, could accept them as ex-convicts more easily than they could accept them as lesbians.