Stories Behind Bars (S.B.B) is a project led by Millennium Fellows Ashna Devaprasad, Varsha Thomas and Mohammed Dhulqr Shan to advocate for prisoners’ rights by creating awareness about their everyday experiences in the world. Today, a substantial body of research shows that a significant proportion of prisoners belong to marginalised and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. Prisoners in India often do not receive adequate re-entry care through rehabilitative schemes, financial assistance, healthcare support and employment opportunities. The project aims to interact with around 20-30 prisoners, prison staff, and probation officers to understand the lived experiences of individuals forming part of our criminal justice system. Through our research, we seek to identify the effectiveness of current social justice interventions to safeguard the human rights of prisoners and their families, especially post-incarceration. In addition to mapping their experiences, we will carry out five sensitisation programs in colleges across Kerala, including our campus, reaching a target audience of 100 people while simultaneously creating networks to discuss these issues with legal aid societies, social justice offices, and state prisons. Using a combination of interactive presentations, interviews, and theoretical research, this project will urge community members to reflect on prisoners’ personal stories and compare their lives with popular dehumanising public narratives about them. By harnessing the power of stories, this project is taking forward the United Nations’ mission to promote fair, peaceful and inclusive societies by eliminating cruel punishment and securing the well-being of the prison community. It hopes to create a platform for legal empowerment and empathic discourse around criminal justice issues through social advocacy at the community level.