Our guest speaker, Pamela Zimba, has personal experience with the criminal justice system. Ms. Zimba was Born in Africa and moved with her family to New Rochelle at age 7. She grew up in a stable, upper-middle-class family. Despite having opportunities and good parents, she fell in with the wrong crowd.

Never having been in trouble before her arrest, she feels failed by the criminal justice system. She was not shown any type of leniency and, in the end, feels that her ethnicity and race figured in the harsh sentence she received.

Since coming out of prison in January 2018, Ms. Zimba has become keenly aware of the lack of services and assistance for childless women in vital areas, such as housing, food subsidies, transportation, educational opportunities and employment. This talk was given at the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester in White Plains, NY on Sunday, January 6, 2019.