Programs to Support
Over the past 40 years, mass incarceration has increased 500% in the U.S. due to changes in policy and legislation. This includes: Undue familiarity, mandatory minimums, and other one-size-fits-all legislation. As a result, a variety of groups have formed to support people while in prison, when they leave, or if they have a loved one incarcerated.
Follow these groups on social media, donate, or volunteer your time and expertise. Each effort does indeed make a difference
Re-entry of Formerly Incarcerated People Faith Organizations Criminal Justice Reform Groups
Organizations Supporting the Re-entry of Formerly Incarcerated People
Reentry for incarcerated people can be just as debilitating a process as spending time in prison. Formerly Incarcerated Persons (FIPs) reenter a world that has continued to change while they were imprisoned; technology and cultural expectations have a tendency of being radically different from the world they remember if they were incarcerated for a great length of time. The stigma attached to spending time in prison is clear in terms of the limitations that FIPs face in trying to gain employment, procure federal assistance or join a flourishing community. Below you will find several organizations that deal with the following:
- Shifting tide of social, political, educational and economic systems
- Stigma attached to FIP status in job search and career management
- Repairing the psychic and emotional harm induced by prison
Annie Casey Foundation Report
This report offers technical assistance strategies and resources to reconnect men and women returning home from prison to their families and neighborhoods through employment, education, health and social services. The report gives guidance on how to reduce barriers facing the formerly incarcerated, including access to housing, work, health care, counseling and job training. Policy changes that could help are highlighted. In addition, the report reviews support available for families and children of the incarcerated to help address loss of income, emotional pain, disruptions in family life and social stigma.
Centerforce
The Centerforce mission is to support, educate, and advocate for individuals, families and communities impacted by incarceration.
Center for NuLeadership
The mission of the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions is to in uence socio-economic, criminal and juvenile justice policy by providing research, advocacy and leadership training to formerly and currently incarcerated people, their families, communities, allies and criminal justice professionals for the purpose of 1) increasing public health and safety by creating viable alternatives that challenge and change over reliance on incarceration-punishment policies and practices as a solution to socio-economic urban and rural problems; (2) reshaping the media portrayal and public opinion of people with criminal records by humanizing their popular image and offering language alternatives to counter current negative stereotypes, beliefs, misinformation and myths; and (3) promoting active participation in criminal and social justice policy decisions, discussions and deliberations by the people whose lives are most directly affected and who have a legitimate stake in the outcomes.
Clean Slate
Without Expungement, every sentence is a life sentence. The Mission of Clean Slate Milwaukee is to promote equal opportunity and equal access to employment, housing, and higher education for men and women that have non-violent criminal backgrounds.
The Correctional Association of New York
The Correctional Association of New York is a criminal justice policy and advocacy organization that works to create a more balanced, efficient, and humane criminal justice system. Currently, the Association is undertaking four core projects: the Public Policy Project, the Women in Prison Project, the Prison Visiting Project and the Juvenile Justice Project.
Exoffenders
Is a resource for employment, reentry and assistance. The site lists nationwide resources for recently released ex-offenders.
Help for Felons
Help For Felons is an organization that is dedicated to helping felons be successful in every aspect of life by providing helpful and current information related to felons and ex-offenders. Their goal is to provide the tools that are needed to not only live, but to be successful and live a fulfilling life. They have information regarding felon friendly jobs and careers, reentry programs, felon friendly apartments /housing and nancial advice regarding loans and grants for felon.
Justice Center
The Justice Center, with funding support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice and the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, U.S. Department of Labor, developed a guide that offers practical recommendations for how state government officials and community-based service providers can better use limited resources to help people released from prisons and jails successfully and safely rejoin neighborhoods and families.
Made Men Worldwide
Made Men Worldwide promotes family restoration and the healing of societal ills through responsible fatherhood initiatives worldwide.
National Re-Entry Project
Reentry Central is the national website for news and information on the subject of reentry and related criminal justice issues.
Project 180
Over 30,000 Florida prisoners are released annually and reenter our communities. Many wish to become law-abiding citizens and have the best intention of living a conventional life yet most have few job skills, lack a formal education, and experience discrimination in housing and job markets because of their felony records. As a result, they become our local statistics—the homeless, the unemployed, the under-educated, the impoverished. Unable to make it in the conventional world, over 60% are rearrested for a new crime within three years causing further victimization and a drain on community resources. Project 180 seeks to break this cycle by providing workforce education and nancial literacy classes for inmates and an annual re-entry lecture series for the general public. Their long-term goal is to open a 24/7 residential program for offenders who wish to turn their lives around. Project 180 seeks to build community, not more prisons.
Project Return
Project RETURN helps men and women leaving prison make a positive and permanent return to our community.
St. Louis Area Re-entry
Provides general information, street addresses, phone numbers and websites for dozens of agencies, shelters, employment resources, food pantries and other organizations throughout the St. Louis area.
Faith Organizations Working on Criminal Justice Reform & Re-entry Support
The Benedict Center
The Benedict Center is an interfaith nonprofit agency working with victims, offenders and the community to achieve a system of criminal justice that is fair and treats every person involved with dignity and respect. At the Benedict Center, there are many ways for every person who champions human potential, human dignity, and human rights to make a personal difference. This is a place where a passion for justice runs deep, underscoring our belief that change is always possible and transformation a reality.
Healing Communities USA
Healing Communities is a framework for a distinct form of ministry for men and women returning from or at risk of incarceration, their families and the larger community. Healing Communities challenges congregations to become Stations of Hope for those persons affected by the criminal justice system.
Live Free Initiative of Pico
With hundreds of congregations as well as countless leaders and movement partners throughout the country, the LIVE FREE Campaign is working to end the scourges of gun violence, Mass Incarceration, and the criminalization of Black and Brown bodies that tears at the soul of our society. What we have found is that the road to ending gun violence and Mass Incarceration runs directly through cities and counties. While we attempt to in uence federal and state policies whenever possible, our primary focus is on ensuring that sheriffs, prosecutors, police chiefs, mayors, city council members, and county commissioners are held accountable as allies, and not obstacles, to criminal justice reform.
Prison Fellowship Re-entry Support
As release day approaches, the problems awaiting prisoners on the other side of the gate can be overwhelming. For years, they’ve been told when to eat, what to wear, and where to go. Now suddenly they will have to make decisions on their own.Prison Fellowship staff and volunteers are devoted to helping prepare men and women to leave prison with a positive outlook, ready to succeed. Several prison facilities, offer mentorships, life-skills training, marriage and parenting classes, and other programs that teach personal responsibility, the value of education and hard work, and care for people and their property, so that prisoners are prepared to thrive in their communities after release. In some states, they run faith dorms, where incarcerated men and women can participate in biblically based training within a nurturing Christian community.
Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference
The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC) represents a cross section of progressive African American faith leaders and their congregations in the United States. Founded in 2003 as a 501(c)(3) organization, the SDPC was called into being to continue the rich legacy of the faith community’s engagement in issues of social justice.
Table of Saints
Table of Saints helps those who were incarcerated to make a positive transition into community and family life. Their main goals are to help the returning citizens with their re-entry process by walking in obedience as men of God and upstanding citizens in our community. Providing a social service for those seeking to successfully make a transition from incarceration back into society, by providing restorative life skills through Christ-centered after care.
Non-profit Criminal Justice Reform Groups
#Cut50s
#cut50, an initiative of The Dream Corps, is a national bipartisan effort to smartly and safely reduce America’s incarcerated population by 50 percent over the next 10 years.
All of Us or None
Prison sentences for millions of people with felony convictions never really end when prejudice and discrimination based on felony criminal histories persist outside the prison walls. Former prisoners, prisoners, people convicted of felonies and their allies have come together to combat the many forms of life-long discrimination in All of Us or None
Amachi
The Sentencing Project and its coalition partners, the American Civil Liberties Union, Open Society Policy Center and Drug Policy Alliance, are actively working to advance crack cocaine sentencing reform in Congress. Coalition members have launched a national campaign to educate the public about the crack and powder cocaine-sentencing disparity. The goal is to encourage the American public to make their voices heard in order to tame the mandatory penalties. The 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts established excessive mandatory penalties for crack cocaine that were the harshest ever adopted for low-level drug offenses and created drastically different penalty structures for crack cocaine compared to powder cocaine, which are pharmacologically identical substances. The law has diverted precious resources away from prevention and treatment for drug users and devastated communities ripped apart by incarceration.
American Civil Liberties Union
Stop Solitary Advocacy Campaign Tools
ACLU. Website includes: Stop Solitary Quick Facts, Stop Solitary Brie ng Paper, Getting Started Collecting Corrections and Other Data in Your State, Campaign Dos and Don’ts, Model Social Networking Language, Model Stop Solitary Legislation, Model Fiscal Analysis Memo Checklist for a Visit to a Supermax Facility, State-Speci c Resources, Litigation Resources, Articles and Other Resources.
Birthing Behind Bars
This is a national campaign to address pregnancy and other reproductive justice issues in prison.
Black & Blue
History and Current Manifestations of Policing, Violence & Resistance
Over the past couple of years, Project NIA has spearheaded the development and dissemination of several curriculum projects focused on youth criminalization and on exploring the roots of violence more generally. We have been excited to partner with such organizations as the Chicago PIC Teaching Collective, Chicago Freedom School, Teachers for Social Justice, and the Jane Addams Hull House Museum on some of these projects.
Black & Pink
Black & Pink is an open family of LGBTQ prisoners and “free world” allies who support each other. Their work toward the abolition of the prison industrial complex is rooted in the experience of currently and formerly incarcerated people. They are outraged by the speci c violence of the prison industrial complex against LGBTQ people, and respond through advocacy, education, direct service, and organizing.
Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Speaking
The Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending, a non-pro t public policy organization, is concerned about the social and economic costs of prison expansion.
Center for Justice and Reconciliation
Convinced that restorative justice is an important contemporary expression of those principles, the Centre has adopted the following mission: To develop and promote restorative justice in criminal justice systems around the world.
Correctional Association of New York
The Correctional Association of New York is a criminal justice policy and advocacy organization that works to create a more balanced, ef cient, and humane criminal justice system. Currently, the Association is undertaking four core projects: the Public Policy Project, the Women in Prison Project, the Prison Visiting Project and the Juvenile Justice Project.
Corrections Corporation of America
CCA founded the private corrections management industry three decades ago, establishing industry standards for future-focused, forward-thinking correctional solutions. A commitment to innovation, ef ciency, cost effectiveness and achievement has made the company the partnership corrections provider of choice for federal, state and local agencies since 1983.
Critical Resistance
Critical Resistance (CR) is a national grassroots organization building a movement to abolish the prison industrial complex (PIC). They think of the PIC as the system of surveillance, policing, and imprisonment that government, industry and their interests use as solutions to economic, social, and political problems. Because the PIC is a huge, complicated system, they have to attack it from all different angles using many different strategies. Their broad abolitionist strategy embraces 3 main frames: Dismantle, Change and Build.
Ellen Baker Center for Human Rights
We are named after Ella Baker, a brilliant, black hero of the civil rights movement. Following in her footsteps, we build the power of black, brown, and poor people to break the cycles of incarceration and poverty and make our communities safe, healthy, and strong.
Equal Justice Initiative
The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending Mass Incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.
Fair Chance Project
They are loved ones of long-term lifers, concerned community members, and Liberated Lifers intent on carrying out the ght to free thousands who have spent far too many years behind bars long after they accepted full responsibility for their crimes, long after they have been fully rehabilitated, long after they ful lled all requirements to become eligible for parole. They are committed to building a future for all California residents beyond prisons. Their goal is to transform unjust sentencing laws and Parole policies while protecting the Human and Constitutional rights of those impacted by the prison system.
Families Against Mandatory Minimums
FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) is a nonpro t, nonpartisan organization ghting for smart sentencing laws that protect public safety. We see a country where criminal sentencing is individualized, humane, and suf cient to impose fair punishment and protect public safety. Our supporters include taxpayers, families, prisoners, law enforcement, attorneys, judges, criminal justice experts and concerned citizens.
Formerly Incarerated Peoples Movement
The goal of changing the criminal justice system is to create and implement alternatives to incarceration, working toward a society where prisons do not exist. We demand the end of Mass Incarceration and commit ourselves to ghting the notion and the practice of building new prisons, juvenile detention facilities and immigration detention centers.
Mass Incarceration does not add to public safety, and diverts real resources from other social needs. We are cognizant that the Prison Industrial Complex is so expensive that it denies society the opportunity to provide basic structure such as children’s education, medical care, mental health care, and support for our elders. We commit ourselves to pursuing a new direction, one that insures genuine safety for our community and transforms “hoods” back into neighborhoods.
Fortune Society
The Fortune Society’s mission is to support successful reentry from incarceration and promote alternatives to incarceration, thus strengthening the fabric of our communities.
Grassroots Leadership
Grassroots Leadership focuses on organizing and direction action in the southern states. The website also contains useful research materials, including a comprehensive national study on the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).
NAACP
The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.
National H.I.R.E. Network
Established by the Legal Action Center in 2001, the National Helping Individuals with criminal records Re-enter through Employment (H.I.R.E.) Network is both a national clearinghouse for information and an advocate for policy change. It is one of several special projects at the Legal Action Center. The goal of the National H.I.R.E. Network is to increase the number and quality of job opportunities available to people with criminal records by changing public policies, employment practices and public opinion. (Read the National H.I.R.E. Network’s operating principles and advocacy priorities.
HIRE accomplishes these goals by providing leadership on public policy advocacy, providing technical assistance and training on overcoming labor market barriers based on a criminal record, and promoting collaboration between individuals directly affected by the criminal justice system, advocates, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers working to improve the employability of people with criminal records. The National H.I.R.E. Network is generously supported by the Open Society Foundations.
National Re-entry Project
Reentry Central is the national website for news and information on the subject of reentry and related criminal justice issues.
National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI)
National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) is the nation’s leading non-pro t organization working to end father absence. Underlying many of society’s most pressing challenges is a lack of father involvement in their children’s lives.
Models for Change
The new modelsforchange.net website offers up-to-date information about key accomplishments in the eld. It also shares recent developments from Models for Change, a national comprehensive, multi-state juvenile justice systems reform initiative.
Prison NIA
The Chicago Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) Teaching Collective is an all-volunteer group that organizes interactive workshops, lm screenings, and trainings which aim to inspire action. They also produce educational materials and resources. They provide opportunities for youth and adults to explore issues related to Mass Incarceration. They focus on practical steps to inspire, inform, and enable action, and on how to develop workable alternatives.
Prison Policy Initiative
Up-to-date listings for organizations providing legal services to people in prison and jail.
Re-entry Employment Opportunities Benchmarking Study
Restorative Justice Online
The Centre for Justice & Reconciliation is a program of Prison Fellowship International. Its mission is to develop and promote restorative justice in criminal justice systems around the world.
ScholarCHIPS
ScholarCHIPS provides college scholarships, mentoring and a peer support network to children of incarcerated parents, inspiring them to complete their college education.
SKIP, Inc.
Our mission is to provide support services to children of incarcerated parents and their families and to increase public awareness of the underlying problems of these children as victims through education, advocacy and research. The purpose of SKIP programs is to help children (“Skippers”) of incarcerated parents and their families better cope with separation due to incarceration; to maintain family ties, and to break the cycle of incarceration by:
- Informing the community at large of the underlying problems of children with incarcerated parents and the necessity of community support.
- Increasing family awareness of community services and support that are available to them. SKIP programs help “Skippers” to become self-reliant and responsible adults by giving them hope and options for the future; thus, enabling them to become productive citizens.
Spirit House
Since 1999, SpiritHouse Inc, a Durham, North Carolina based cultural arts and organizing organization, has worked with low-wealth families and community members to uncover and uproot the systemic barriers that prevent us from gaining the resources, leverage and capacity for long-term self-sufficiency.
“Collective Sun-reshape the mo(u)rning” is a multi-media, community intervention performance piece, that draws from more than ve years of research, organizing and programmatic work that has been the emphasis of local campaigns to end Mass Incarceration, racial pro ling, and the school to prison pipeline. As survivors of domestic and state violence, sexual assault, gang aggression, displaced/fractured families, and drug dependence, Collective Sun visionaries, dreamed about authentic accountability, grounded in an understanding of our struggles and our value. “Collective Sun,” creates a platform where families and community members can use their own experiences and voices to become solution-oriented and civically engaged around issues facing their local communities.
The Human Rights Coaltion
The Human Rights Coalition is a group of predominately prisoners’ families, ex-prisoners and some supporters. Their ultimate goal is to abolish prisons. The prison system is based on a foundation of exploitation, punishment and corruption. Most of the people in prisons are poor, brown, urban, functionally illiterate, unemployed or under-employed before they were locked down, and are there for non-violent crimes. The prison system re ects all the other social inequalities in our system, and it does not work in its current incarnation.
The Innocence Project
The Innocence Project, founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
The National Priorities Project (NPP)
NPP focuses on the impacts of federal tax and spending policies at the community level. NPP works to translate policy information into everyday language in order to assist national and grassroots groups in their efforts to improve schools, create living wage jobs, provide affordable housing, and develop alternatives to excessive spending on the military and prisons.
The Open Society Institute (OSI)
The Open Society Institute is part of the Soros foundations network. The goal of the Soros foundations network is to transform closed societies into open, democratic ones and to protect the values of existing open societies. The OSI Criminal Justice Initiative supports work to reduce the excessive reliance on punishment and incarceration in the United States, and to promote fair and equal treatment in all aspects of the U.S. criminal justice system.
The Racial Disparity Initiative
The goals of the project are to make visible the often invisible discriminatory practices of denying employment to individuals with criminal records, to reduce the class and race based stigma of criminality and to challenge the popular media discourse that demonizes individuals with criminal records and individuals making the transition from prison to civil society. This project aims to challenge the belief that employing individuals with criminal records is a public safety risk.
The Sentencing Project
The Sentencing Project and its coalition partners, the American Civil Liberties Union, Open Society Policy Center and Drug Policy Alliance, are actively working to advance crack cocaine sentencing reform in Congress. Coalition members have launched a national campaign to educate the public about the crack and powder cocaine-sentencing disparity. The goal is to encourage the American public to make their voices heard in order to tame the mandatory penalties. The 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts established excessive mandatory penalties for crack cocaine that were the harshest ever adopted for low-level drug offenses and created drastically different penalty structures for crack cocaine compared to powder cocaine, which are pharmacologically identical substances. The law has diverted precious resources away from prevention and treatment for drug users and devastated communities ripped apart by incarceration.
Vera Institute of Justice
We work with others who share our vision to tackle the most pressing injustices of our day—from the causes and consequences of Mass Incarceration, racial disparities, and the loss of public trust in law enforcement, to the unmet needs of the vulnerable, the marginalized, and those harmed by crime and violence.
Volunteers of America
Volunteers of America is a faith-based human services organization. We are dedicated to helping individuals and families in need create positive and lasting change through social service programs that support and empower them to live safe, healthy and productive lives.
Wisdom
ROC Wisconsin is an urgent call to our state to:
- Restore communities that have been harmed by Mass Incarceration; • Restore families to wholeness and health;
- Restore balance, scal discipline and humane priorities to our state’s criminal justice system;
- Restore men and women back to the community who do not need to be incarcerated;
- Restore people to health through increased treatment alternatives to incarceration, decreased use of solitary con nement, better support for those who return from jail or prison.
Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance
Makes visible women’s experiences in the criminal justice system. Documenting these stories is integral to this project of resistance. The stories are supported by a collection of resources, such as organizations, reports, essays, and links to a wide range of information on women and prison.
Women on the Rise
Women on the Rise is a membership-based organization of women targeted and/or impacted by the criminal “justice” system. Women on the Rise works to educate, heal, and empower ourselves, one another, and our communities to demand justice, dignity, and liberation for all.
As Women on the Rise, we assert that public safety is created by strong, interdependent communities, and empowered women and families, not by prisons and police. We honor our lived experience, reclaim our inherent power, cultivate a passion for justice, and engage in bold, collective action to transform our communities and the institutions that affect our families and our lives.
Women’s Prison Association
The new modelsforchange.net website offers up-to-date information about key accomplishments in the eld. It also shares recent developments from Models for Change, a national comprehensive, multi-state juvenile justice systems reform initiative.
