Secular Organizations
Appalachian Prison Book Project: Challenging mass incarceration through books, education, and community engagement. https://appalachianprisonbookproject.org/
Arkansas Cure: Arkansas CURE works to promote rehabilitation for the benefit of the community as a whole, and of the incarcerated individual through meaningful criminal justice reform by advocating for meaningful change through the legislative process. : https://nationinside.org/campaign/arkansas-cure/posts/
ATX Anarchist Black Cross :Texas based abolitionist group. Building Prisoner Solidarity & Striving Toward A World Without Cages. https://atxanarchistblackcross.wordpress.com/
Black & Pink: Black & Pink National is a prison abolitionist organization dedicated to abolishing the criminal punishment system and liberating LGBTQIA2S+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS who are affected by that system through advocacy, support, and organizing. https://www.blackandpink.org/
Blue Ridge Anarchist Black Cross: https://brabc.blackblogs.org/BR@BC is committed to offering support to prison rebels, anarchist prisoners, and other political prisoners and prisoners of war in the US. We believe in supporting those who fight for collective liberation against all forms of institutional oppression. We are also working to raise funds to support folks on the outside who suffer repression for political actions they take part in. Finally, we are looking to support decarceration efforts in our community.
Carolina Youth Action Project: The Carolina Youth Action Project is an abolitionist organization that centers on political education and community organizing to build power among girls, trans youth, and gender non-conforming youth. (Charleston, SC)
Center for Community Transitions (Charlotte, NC): CCT seeks to strengthen the community by helping those with criminal records and their families navigate paths towards healthy and productive lives. https://sharecharlotte.org/nonprofit/center-community-transitions
Communities Not Prisons: Alabama Communities Not Prisons is a coalition of people, communities, and organizations committed to stopping the ill-conceived construction of prisons being forced upon Bibb, Elmore, and Escambia counties. This is a local fight with statewide and national implications. Communities Not Prisons is a local, Alabama-led effort, and we are joined by equally determined regional and national partners who recognize that the consequences of this prison construction plan will extend far beyond the county line. https://www.communitiesnotprisons.org
Conservative Justice Reform: The Nolan Center for Justice was established by the American Conservative Union Foundation to provide leadership for the growing conservative consensus that our criminal justice system is badly broken, and that there are proven, conservative reforms that will keep the public safe while restraining costs. ACUF’s Nolan Center for Justice promotes policies that improve public safety, reduce government cost, and protect human dignity in our justice system. Criminal Justice Reform is a high priority for ACUF, and it has been highlighted at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for several years. The Center raises public awareness of conservative criminal justice reforms through opinion pieces, media interviews, briefing papers, and testifying as expert witnesses at government hearings. We also assist legislators and leaders of government agencies in applying conservative principles as they craft solutions to crime and justice issues. https://conservativejusticereform.org/about/
Critical Resistance: Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the prison industrial complex (PIC) by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. We believe that basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really make our communities secure. As such, our work is part of global struggles against inequality and powerlessness. The success of the movement requires that it reflect communities most affected by the PIC. Because we seek to abolish the PIC, we cannot support any work that extends its life or scope. : https://criticalresistance.org/mission-vision/
Emancipate NC : Through community education, narrative shift, and litigation, Emancipate NC supports North Carolina’s people as they free themselves from mass incarceration and structural racism. https://emancipatenc.org/we-are-living-abolition/
Equal Justice Initiative Montgomery, Alabama : The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) 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. https://eji.org/
Forward Justice: Forward justice is a nonpartisan law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. South.We are organizers, lawyers, creatives, strategists and directly impacted people dedicated to ensuring that the ‘we’ in We the People is truly inclusive and representative of ALL Americans. Our work catalyzes success for movements and expands democratic opportunities for people affected by injustice. The victories we achieve together accelerate national change. https://forwardjustice.org/
Friends For Life (Georgia) : Pairs mentors children with incarcerated parent(s) in Barrow, Clarke, Elbert, Greene, Jackson, Madison, and Oglethorpe counties : www.fflife.net
INCITE! is a network of radical feminists of color organizing to end state violence and violence in our homes and communities.
Just City (Memphis): We pursue a smaller, fairer, and more humane criminal justice system. : https://justcity.org/
Kentucky Criminal Justice Forum: Recently, a group of community organizations with shared views came together to form an advocacy group to work toward real and meaningful criminal justice reform, primarily at the state and local levels. The organization's goal is threefold: Engage key stakeholders in the criminal justice reform conversation. Invite legislators to partake in panel discussions on what they see as the most pressing criminal justice concerns our local or state governments face today.
Give the community an opportunity to provide legislators with valuable informatio, via breakout sessions during a series of community forums. : https://www.kentuckycjf.org/about-us/
Louisiana for Prison Alternatives: LPA is dedicated to ensuring the Louisiana passes and implements the comprehensive criminal justice overhaul our state desperately needs. We seek a society with equal opportunity, fair treatment, and justice for all. https://www.prisonreformla.com/
Midsouth Peace: Memphis United began in February of 2013, as a coalition of grassroots organizations, community groups, and Memphis residents formed to confront structural and institution racism: https://midsouthpeace.org/our-work/memphis-united/
Mountain State Justice: Mountain State Justice opened its doors in 1996 to pursue impact and significant litigation on behalf of low-income West Virginians. Since that time, we have provided free legal services to thousands of individuals fighting to protect their families, their homes, their health and safety, and their livelihoods. Since our founding, we have kept our practice flexible to meet the changing needs of low-income West Virginians facing mistreatment by powerful institutions—from banks and car dealers to schools, state hospitals, and prisons. Criminal justice reform is central to our mission of fighting systemic injustice in the Mountain State. : https://mountainstatejustice.org/
No Exceptions Prison Collective: No Exceptions Prison Collective is a grassroots initiative in Nashville, TN, dedicated to ending carceral enslavement by advocating that no exceptions be made to the abolition of slavery. We were founded and are led by individuals directly impacted by carceral slavery – both insiders (prisoners) and free world folk. : https://noexceptionsprisoncollective.org
Prison Fellowship of SC: Prison Fellowship victories in South Carolina include working with the churches, citizens, and government leaders in 2010 to pass the Crime Reduction and Sentencing Reform Act (Senate Bill 1154) to increase support for crime victims, strengthen the state’s parole system, and provide ways for individuals who are incarcerated to transform their lives. : https://www.prisonfellowship.org/about/justicereform/legislation/state-issues/south-carolina/
Project South: WHAT DOES THE SOUTHERN MOVEMENT ASSEMBLY DO?
• Organize and base-build to grow our numbers & leadership
• Create liberatory education
• Create a new communication infrastructure
• Facilitate community, local, and thematic assemblies
• Build & cross-pollinate our relationships for greater impact
• Increase capacity for collaborative rapid response to crisis and opportunity
SC Prison Justice Network:South Carolina Prison Justice Network fights to advance the human rights of those inside our state’s jails and prisons. We call for policy reform that ends mass incarceration and that emphasizes rehabilitation of our neighbors. It is time to reform South Carolina’s criminal justice system. https://nationinside.org/campaign/south-carolina-prison-justice-network/about/
SC4CJR: We are a statewide, non-partisan, non-profit, grassroots organization dedicated to achieving holistic criminal justice reform in South Carolina. Our focus areas include crime prevention and recidivism reduction, rights education and awareness, transparent and fair prosecution, humane jail and prison conditions & reduce financial burdens of mass incarceration, harsh sentencing, and over-criminalization on South Carolina taxpayers. https://www.sc4cjr.org/
Southern Center for Human Rights (Atlanta, GA): provides legal representation to people facing the death penalty, challenges human rights violations in prisons and jails, seeks through litigation and advocacy to improve legal representation for poor people accused of crimes, and advocates for criminal justice system reforms on behalf of those affected by the system in the Southern United States. : https://www.schr.org/
Southern Coalition for Social Justice : SCSJ represents individuals and community-based organizations in cases throughout the South that raise important criminal justice issues, and that create the potential for structural change that will benefit entire communities and have positive implications for racial justice, particularly if there is community-wide organizing support. :https://southerncoalition.org/criminal-justice/
Texas After Violence Project: Texas After Violence is dedicated to the telling, preserving, and sharing of personal experiences of people harmed by the criminal legal system, while always honoring the agency, dignity, and narrative power of every directly impacted person. This work takes many forms, although the core of our archive is video-based oral history interviews. Our archive can be found here. : https://texasafterviolence.org/
Texas Inmate Families Association: TIFA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Our mission is to break the cycle of crime by strengthening families through support, education, and advocacy. TIFA also provides parole workshops as well as online resources for our members. https://tifa.org/
Texas Organizing Project: We fight for bold justice reform that is rooted in our goal of ending mass incarceration that is destroying Black and Latino communities. https://organizetexas.org/campaigns/right2justice/
The Florida Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform: FCCJR is dedicated to ending over-incarceration and racial disparities in Florida’s criminal justice system through data-driven, proven approaches that will save taxpayer money, keep our families intact, and make our communities safer by maintaining human dignity, and prioritizing rehabilitation, treatment, and alternatives to incarceration. https://www.betterjusticefl.com/
The Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition (MPRC), led by the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, is a group of formerly incarcerated people, families with loved-ones in prison, advocacy organizations, and concerned residents demanding that the state of Mississippi immediately reduce the prison population, remove harmful conditions, policies and practices, and restore humanity. https://www.peoplesadvocacyinstitute.com/mississippi-prison-reform-coalition
The Tennessee Coalition for Sensible Justice will advocate for reforms that enhance public safety, promote rehabilitation and re-entry, and save taxpayer dollars: http://www.tnsensiblejustice.com/who-we-are
Transformative Justice Working Group : https://nashvillefeministcollective.com/transformative-justice-working-group/
VA Prison Abolition Collective: The Virginia Prison Abolition Collective is part and parcel of a unified front within the Prison Lives Matter National Coordinating Committee. We seek to use this network to build a statewide infrastructure and regional organizing committee aimed at establishing inside-out coordination between captives and outside abolitionists in order to galvanize the power and momentum of our movement. This collective is made up of existing prison abolition organizations who fight for a future rooted in shared humanity, and an end to the exploitation and unjustifiable incarceration of all poor, oppressed, and marginalized peoples, as well as a decisive end to the prison industrial complex and the private prison industry. : https://vaprisonabolition.org/
Vanderbilt Prison Project: https://studentorg.vanderbilt.edu/prisonproject/community-partnerships/
Virginia Prison Justice Network: Organizations within the Virginia Prison Justice Network commit to find common ground by working together to build a statewide movement to end mass incarceration. Although groups may focus on different issues (i.e. re-entry, school to prison pipeline, human rights for prisoners, etc.), we all demand more justice in the courts, comprehensive legislative change, and a push for more alternatives to detention. To have a real impact and be truly effective, we are rooted, not just in this purpose, but also in the understanding that building capacity is a process of sharing knowledge, skills, and resources. Together, we can build a movement for change. https://vapjn.wordpress.com/mission-2/
Zinn Project: The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in classrooms across the country. Since 2008, the Zinn Education Project has introduced students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. With more than 140,000 people registered, and growing by more than 15,000 new registrants every year, the Zinn Education Project has become a leading resource for teachers and teacher educators. https://www.zinnedproject.org/themes/civil-rights-movements/
Religious & Spiritual Organizations
Bend the Arc: Bend the Arc is uniting progressive Jewish voices across America to fight for justice for all. : https://www.bendthearc.us/about
Christians for the Abolition of Prisons:
https://christiansforabolition.org/
The Christian Science Monitor: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2021/0628/How-race-shaped-the-South-s-punitive-approach-to-justice
Southern Prison Ministry, The Open Door Community (Georgia)
Provides residential services to people in need; facilitates monthly visitations for family and friends of prisoners in Hardwick and on death row
Tennessee Outreach Prison Ministry:The Tennessee Prison Outreach Ministry and Reentry Center serves men and women who are incarcerated, juveniles who are incarcerated, and the children of the incarcerated. Our programs provide those impacted by incarceration with the practical economic and educational support needed to begin again and live a full, productive life after prison. At the same time, TPOM's services also address each program participants' mental health and deeper spiritual needs, restoring their faith and giving them the tools necessary for long-term recovery. With this holistic approach, we seek to break the cycle of generational incarceration and provide hope to the forgotten. Through God's grace, no life is beyond salvation.
https://www.tnprisonministry.org/
WV Council of Churches: The West Virginia Council of Churches is an ecumenical organization that provides a Christian witness on public issues and engages in cooperative mission and service for all West Virginians. The Council is one of the oldest institutions in the state of West Virginia, tracing our origins back to 1880 and currently includes 15 member body denominations. Over the years, the West Virginia Council of Churches has been active in areas of social justice, health and economic issues, legislative issues, and disaster response. : https://wvcc.org/
Podcasts & Media
Beyond Reform: Abolishing Prisons | Maya Schenwar | TEDxBaltimore
The United States has the highest imprisonment rate in the world. But is the problem simply that too many people are incarcerated--or is incarceration a problem, in and of itself?The US prison system, which is grounded in racism and economic injustice, is inherently destructive and must be abolished. Recorded at TEDxBaltimore January 2016. Maya is Truthout's editor-in-chief and the author of "Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better." Maya serves on the Board of Advisors at Waging Nonviolence. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ht
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFTRn_sIGiQ
ABOLITION IS THE EMBODIMENT OF GOD'S JUSTICE : Hannah Bowan, Sojourners
https://sojo.net/articles/abolition-embodiment-gods-justice
Rustbelt Abolition Radio is an abolitionist media and movement-building project based in Detroit, MI. Each episode broadcasts the voices of those impacted by incarceration and explores ongoing work in the movement to abolish the carceral state (that is, prisons, police, courts as well as racial domination and capitalist exploitation).
The show seeks to strengthen community collaboration and undermine the common sense that putting people in cages and shackling them with electronic devices solves the problems produced by racial capitalism. As such, we aim to expand our ability to struggle against the ways in which the carceral state impacts our daily lives and to create a space where we can both imagine and remake our world anew. :https://rustbeltradio.org/about/
Incarcerated Father’s Library: https://nrccfi.camden.rutgers.edu/resources/library/incarcerated-fathers-library/
Beyond Prisons: https://www.beyond-prisons.com/
Beyond Prisons is a podcast that explores incarceration from an abolitionist perspective. We amplify the voices of people directly impacted by the system and seek to tell stories that push us to imagine and work toward a world without prisons.
Launched in 2017 by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein, Beyond Prisons is an educational and political resource for those new to abolition and those long engaged in movement work.
It’s Going Down
It’s Going Down is a digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements across so-called North America. Our mission is to provide a resilient platform to publicize and promote revolutionary theory and action.
Re-Visions of Abolition: From Critical Resistance to A New Way of Life
The direct catalyst for this film was a videography project, undertaken by Cameo Watkins and Patricia Naqi. As residents of A New Way of Life and interns with the LEAD project, they conducted video interviews with community members in Watts, California about their experience with the police. Their video project was the seed that grew into Visions of Abolition. Setsu Shigematsu, Cameron Granadino, Jolie Chea, and Kai Green worked on developing this film to disseminate the politics of abolition as an urgent alternative to the failure of the criminal legal carceral system.
https://www.visionsofabolition.org/
The Civil War (documentary) by Ken Burns
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-civil-war/
What a World Without Prisons Could Look Like
Deanna Van Buren designs restorative justice centers that, instead of taking the punitive approach used by a system focused on mass incarceration, treat crime as a breach of relationships and justice as a process where all stakeholders come together to repair that breach. With help and ideas from incarcerated men and women, Van Buren is creating dynamic spaces that provide safe venues for dialogue and reconciliation; employment and job training; and social services to help keep people from entering the justice system in the first place. "Imagine a world without prisons," Van Buren says. "And join me in creating all the things that we could build instead."
https://www.ted.com/talks/deanna_van_buren_what_a_world_without_prisons_could_look_like?language=en
From Reform to Abolition: The Future of the U.S. Prison System
In this TEDx talk, Emma Harrison explains how the United States prison system is fundamentally broken and needs to be restructured. Born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Emma Harrison is a senior studying political science and multidisciplinary studies with areas of emphasis in Africana studies, women's and gender studies, and leadership studies at West Virginia University. A 2018 Truman Scholar, her volunteer work and studies have led to a passionate pursuit of fairness and justice in our criminal justice system.
https://www.ted.com/talks/emma_harrison_from_reform_to_abolition_the_future_of_the_u_s_prison_system
An Abolitionist's Handbook
12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World
By: Patrisse Cullors
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250272973/anabolitionistshandbook
13th (documentary)
13th is a 2016 American documentary film by director Ava DuVernay. The film explores the "intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States. It is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1865, which abolished slavery throughout the United States and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for conviction of a crime.
Full film here^
Michelle Alexander focuses a lot on private prisons in her book The New Jim Crow. The creator of If the Creek Don’t Rise: Prison Abolition in the South is also a researcher and associate producer on Calling Bullshi!t. This episode tells the story of for-profit incarceration and focuses on CoreCivic.
Carceral Con : The Deceptive Terrain of Criminal Justice Reform
Kay Whitlock and Nancy A. Heitzeg