Huling will help policymakers, advocates and community leaders identify, document and implement effective ways to close state prisons in rural America. She will focus on best practices in the closure of prisons in rural areas, alternatives to prison industries, and successful adaptive re-use of correctional facilities.
For the last 15 years Huling has conducted groundbreaking work and authored several publications on the complex relationships between prison reform, rural community well-being, and the use of prisons as rural economic development in New York and throughout the United States. She also is a leading social entrepreneur and founded the Prison Public Memory Project, the National Resource Center on Prisons and Communities, and the Women in Jail and Prison Project of the Correctional Association of New York where she served as Director of Public Policy. She has consulted with a wide range of national and regional rural organizations including the Rural Policy Research Institute and the Southern Rural Development Initiative, and provided assistance to hundreds of groups in rural communities, including local chambers of commerce and economic development agencies. Huling has also produced and directed documentary films, including Yes, In My Backyard, the first film portrait of a prison town. She is a long-time resident of upstate New York.