Know Your Red Flags.
Know Your Options.
A guide created with the knowledge and lived experience of currently incarcerated survivors to help people inside recognize grooming, boundary violations, and abuse of power.
"If something feels wrong, confusing, or uncomfortable — trust that."
Know Your Red Flags.
About the Red Flag Guide
The Red Flag Guide was created through Unapologetically HERS' Participatory Action Research Leadership Program (PARLP), where incarcerated Community Researchers lead research projects grounded in lived experience and community knowledge.
This is not a guide created by outside experts speaking for incarcerated people. It was shaped by people inside who understand how power operates within prisons — because they have lived it.
People inside generated the analysis. People inside identified the themes. People inside shaped the language. People inside validated the content. Lived expertise shaped every aspect of this guide.
Recognize early warning signs of grooming and boundary violations
Understand how abuse of power can develop inside institutional settings
Reflect on what you may be experiencing — at your own pace, on your own terms
Think through possible options and identify trusted support
"This guide was created with people inside, not for them from the outside."
Why This Guide Matters
Inside prison, abuse of power can be difficult to recognize — because the people causing harm often control nearly every part of daily life.
Staff can control:
Boundary violations and grooming often:
- Develop slowly over time
- Feel confusing or hard to name
- Become normalized
- Involve manipulation, secrecy, or coercion
- Create dependency or fear of retaliation
Harm is never the fault of the person experiencing it.
People deserve information and options — without pressure.
Safety and autonomy matter.
Everyone deserves support without judgment.
"This guide gives information. What someone does with that information is up to them."
Meet the Community Researchers
These Community Researchers brought their lived experience, analysis, care, courage, and leadership into every stage of this process. Their insight shaped this guide from beginning to end.
They are researchers. They are analysts. They are knowledge producers and movement leaders.
Amber
Community ResearcherLeader, analyst, collaborator — shaping knowledge from lived experience.
Bianca
Community ResearcherBringing care and courage into the research process.
Mary
Community ResearcherCentering community safety through collective analysis.
Monica
Community ResearcherGrounding the work in truth and lived expertise.
Bani
Community ResearcherBuilding protective knowledge from the inside out.
Eleanor
Community ResearcherLeading with reflection, analysis, and collective care.
"People closest to the harm are closest to the solutions."
— Participatory Action Research Leadership ProgramCreated Through Participatory Action Research
This guide was built through a collaborative process where incarcerated Community Researchers led the work — from defining the research focus to shaping the final product.
PARLP positions incarcerated people not as subjects of research, but as researchers, analysts, and movement leaders. This is not an awareness campaign. This is community-generated knowledge production — reclaiming narrative power from behind prison walls.
Historically, research about incarcerated people has often been produced by institutions speaking about communities rather than with them. PARLP intentionally shifts that dynamic by positioning incarcerated people as researchers, analysts, collaborators, and authors of knowledge — people capable of documenting, interpreting, and responding to the realities they navigate every day.
This project reflects a different approach to knowledge production: one rooted in lived expertise, collective analysis, collaboration across prison walls, and the belief that people closest to the harm hold critical insight into both the problem and the possibilities for change.
Defining the Focus
Cohort 5 chose to focus on grooming, abuse of power, and boundary violations inside prison — examining how people recognize and navigate these dynamics from lived experience.
Adapting the Process
The cohort originally planned to conduct community circles with peers inside. Due to institutional lockdowns, movement restrictions, and prison operational barriers, the methodology had to pivot. This adaptability became part of the work itself.
Gathering Knowledge
Instead of community circles, Community Researchers and peer participants engaged through reflection surveys, written feedback activities, design sensemaking worksheets, and collaborative review and validation processes.
Collective Analysis
Researchers inside and outside prison then worked together to identify recurring themes, analyze patterns, synthesize reflections, validate lived experiences, refine language, and shape the guide's structure and content.
Review & Refinement
The process included multiple rounds of collaborative sensemaking, participant validation, advisory review, and careful revision — ensuring the guide remained grounded in the realities people inside navigate.
People inside are knowledge producers. Their lived experience shaped every part of this guide.
This is community-generated research — centering collective reflection, analysis, and validation.
"This guide was shaped through collective lived experience, reflection, analysis, and community validation."
What's Inside
The guide covers key topics to help people recognize, reflect on, and navigate boundary violations and abuse of power inside.
You Are Not Alone
Your Choices Matter
Common Red Flags
What This Can Look Like
How Grooming Can Develop
Serious Violations
Reflecting on What You Are Experiencing
What You Can Do
Reporting Options
Finding Trusted Support
Support & Resources
Access the Guide
You can read the guide online, download it, print it, or share it with others. This guide belongs to the community — use it however feels right.
Help Us Get This Guide Inside
Unapologetically HERS is seeking movement partners, legal advocates, survivor support organizations, and community supporters to help get physical copies of the Red Flag Guide into the hands of incarcerated survivors.
Many people inside have limited or inconsistent digital access. Physical copies matter. This guide is meant to move hand-to-hand inside.
How you can help:
Print booklet copies and mail them to people inside
Distribute guides during legal visits or through advocacy networks
Help cover printing and mailing costs
Support broader dissemination inside prisons and detention facilities
"Physical copies can be shared cell-to-cell, passed peer-to-peer, and kept close when digital access is limited."
Support Printing & Distribution
Your support helps get this guide directly into the hands of the people it was made for and by.
Acknowledgments
This project was made possible through the leadership of incarcerated Community Researchers, the guidance of advisory partners, and the support of organizations committed to survivor-centered, community-led work.
Advisory Partners
We extend deep gratitude to our advisory partners for reviewing drafts, grounding the work in lived expertise, and helping ensure the guide remained aligned with the realities people inside navigate.
Funding Partners
Their support helped make this collaborative process — research, design, and dissemination — possible.
You are not alone.
You are not to blame.
And you deserve to be safe.
For Us, By Us
