Jean Trounstine is an activist, author and professor emerita at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA.

[1] In 1987, she began teaching and piloted work with women, directing plays at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Framingham for almost ten years.

[3] She co-founded the women's branch of Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) in 1992 with Judge Joseph Dever, First Justice of the Lynn District Court.

[citation needed] A recidivism study of the program by Russell Schutt, a University of Massachusetts professor, showed that it helps to reduce a return to crime.

[citation needed] In 2008, after Trounstine met Karter Reed, who was incarcerated in an adult prison for murder that he committed at age 16, she began researching juvenile justice.