Prison Program

VISION
We seek a society and justice system that treats every human being with dignity.

MISSION
The mission of the Prison Program is to support movements to foster political and social change that:

• Ends the use of incarceration as a solution to social and economic problems
• Redirects human and financial resources away from funding incarceration and towards effective solutions to social and economic problems
• Challenges the race, class, and gender biases in the current systems of incarceration
• Ensures human rights protections of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people

CURRENT GOALS

• Reduce the number of people incarcerated
• Stop the building of additional prisons and work towards closure of existing prisons, public and private
• Expose and challenge human rights abuses of prisoners, including medical, physical, and sexual abuse, and capital punishment
• End the barriers to their successful re-entry for people released from incarceration
• Strengthen the leadership and activism of the most affected constituencies (including prisoners, former prisoners, prisoners’ families, communities of color, and victims/survivors of crime)
• Educate and engage the public to challenge the race, class, and gender inequalities woven into the current criminal justice system
• Promote changes in public policy through effective advocacy
• Foster the development of a movement of strong and effective organizations working to achieve the goals of this program