Justice with Dignity Program
(formerly Prison Program)

Program Vision
We seek a justice system that treats every human being with dignity.

Our Philosophy
Fund for Nonviolence focuses on the U.S. criminal justice system due to its active engagement in state-sponsored violence. In the name of justice, this country, through its many laws and jurisdictions, discriminates against people of color, low-income communities and other marginalized people.  By disproportionately criminalizing and incarcerating members of these communities, and by systematically refusing to recognize the human rights of the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, our justice system prioritizes prejudice, punishment, and control rather than humane interventions to social problems.

We seek partners who are working to change our punitive system into one that heals the long-term effects of current degrading practices and promotes healthy, safe communities for all of its members.  We recognize that the work is a collective effort, generated and sustained by those directly affected by the criminal justice system—incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, families of incarcerated people, communities of color, and victims/survivors of crime—as well as by other allies, likely and unlikely, motivated by a range of experience that points to the need for a radical shift in our justice system as we have known it.  To that end we support the forging of networks and coalitions among organizations and funders whose collaborative work to transform the system is likely to have the most significant impact.

Mission Statement
The Justice with Dignity Program supports organizations and networks that seek to reduce U.S. society’s dependence on incarceration and particularly those that:

• Challenge the use of race, class, gender and other marginalizing constructions to perpetuate the violence inherent in the current US justice system and its institutions
• Promote and strengthen the leadership and activism of the most affected communities
• Invest their resources towards structural change within the justice system, in particular through public policy advocacy

Goals

• Reduce the number of people incarcerated
• Expose and challenge human rights abuses of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people