About Us

Nancy is a proud alumna of Mary Baldwin College.  She has a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, two Master’s Degrees (Public Administration and Criminal Justice), and a Bachelor’s in Sociology/Criminal Justice.  In her 35 years of experience in the Criminal Justice field, Dr. Insco has been an advocate and consultant to reduce mass incarceration and recidivism to public jurisdictions, private entities, and nonprofit organizations.

Dr. Insco started her career, at 24, as the youngest warden (& only female) of a maximum security male state prison in Delaware.  She was the principal planner of a 1,200 bed, multi-jurisdiction detention facility, which contained courts, court-related services, centralized booking, and transportation.  She served as warden of female state prisons in DE and MD, where she founded programs for minimum custody inmates to reunify families on site, 18 months prior to release, and created behavioral-cognitive therapeutic programming.  She led the largest clemency project in the nation, by enabling the release of 38 victims of domestic violence who were serving life sentences for the manslaughter of their perpetrators.

Dr. Insco also served as the Director of the Governor’s Office of Justice Assistance in Maryland. In this position, she wrote legislative bills, lobbied for passage of correctional legislation, led task forces on correctional issues, conducted press conferences and public forums, managed projects involving court-ordered jail reforms, and successfully led efforts to develop alternatives to incarceration. In addition, she worked with the State’s criminal justice agencies in developing funding options and improving processes and procedures that reduce recidivism rates. Highlights of that experience includes developing responses to court decrees on jail overcrowding and reorganizing local court systems. Subsequently, she became Director of the Maryland Division of Probation and Parole.

Her background also includes resource development, grantsmanship and fundraising. She served as Special Assistant for Resource Development for the Attorney General in New Jersey and increased the annual external funding receipts from $7 million to $68 in just two years.

In 2012 she moved back to Staunton, VA where she founded the Institute and quickly started programming at Middle River Regional Jail (MRRJ) to defend and advocate for the rights and dignity of incarcerated women. In 2015 Ms. Insco gained regional media attention as she appeared as one of the main interviewees of a three part investigative report by journalist Tara Todd, produced by NBC29, that brought into question medical care services at MRRJ. This report came to surface at the same time that Harrisonburg City and Rockingham County were considering to build a second jail, or buying into MRRJ managerial rights, to alleviate overcrowding. Since then, Dr. Insco has been an active participant in the Valley Justice Coalition effort to implement criminal justice reforms and reduce mass incarceration in the region.