About the book

A staggering 70% of women experience domestic violence or sexual assault before entering the prison’s unforgiving walls. While in prison, they suffer even more torture as they profit from their cheap inmate labor and have the gall to call this mistreatment a ‘rehabilitation.’ Elizabeth Mikotowicz is one of those who slipped through the cracks that society failed to fill. She was thrust into a life of generational trauma: getting pregnant at a young age by dangerous men. In pregnancy, she was beaten to the point where her skull was visible. After one of his last assaults, she lost her public housing and checked herself into a battered women’s shelter. Due to the extent of her injuries and the risk it posed to the other women, they had to turn her away while two beds were still unoccupied. After that, drug dealers assisted her, and she essentially fell into a life she never desired—she was in college and had ambitions.

But it doesn’t stop there; “No Justice, Just Us” is a powerful, honest story of a woman whose life went apart as a result of domestic violence and her journey through the federal prison system. She detailed her court case, the cruelty she witnessed and experienced in institutions, her addiction, her mental health problems, and how she overcame them all to go from painting murals as a federal prisoner to hosting her art exhibitions and creating an eco-friendly clothing line inspired by her work. She now collaborates with state legislators to pass better legislation. I made the cruelty and corruption within the jail system public.