Our Members
The Ahimsa Collective works to address harm in ways that foster wholeness for everyone. Our north star goals are to replace systems of punishment with paradigms grounded in healing, relationship, and love. To get there, we engage with deep trauma healing and restorative approaches while being grounded in anti-oppression. We work in deep community with people who have committed an act of violence, survivors of violence, and families impacted by harm. In all of our work, we center agency, liberation, dignity, and transformation. Our work intersects with restorative justice, transformative justice, healing justice, and ending sexual violence movements.
All of Us or None / Todos O Nadie
All of Us or None is a grassroots civil and human rights organization fighting for the rights of formerly-and currently-incarcerated people and our families. We are fighting against the discrimination that people face every day because of arrest or conviction history. The goal of All of Us or None is to strengthen the voices of people most affected by mass incarceration and the growth of the prison-industrial complex. Through our grassroots organizing, we are building a powerful political movement to win full restoration of our human and civil rights.
Alliance for California Traditional Arts
The Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) promotes and supports ways for cultural traditions to thrive now and into the future. Since our founding in 1997, we have distributed more than $7 million in grants to more than 1,660 artists and organizations throughout the state.
The Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) works to end mass incarceration in California. To ensure our communities are safe, healthy, and whole, ARC empowers formerly and currently incarcerated people to thrive by providing a support network, comprehensive reentry services, and opportunities to advocate for policy change. Through our grassroots policy advocacy, we are dedicated to transforming the criminal justice system so that it is more just and equitable for all people.
Arts for Healing and Justice Network
The Arts for Healing and Justice Network (AHJN) is an interdisciplinary collaborative that provides exceptional arts programming in order to build resiliency and wellness, eliminate recidivism, and transform the juvenile justice system.
Asian Prisoner Support Committee
The mission of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee (APSC) is to provide direct support to Asian and Pacific Islander (API) prisoners and to raise awareness about the growing number of APIs being imprisoned, detained, and deported. Since 2002, APSC has led programs in prisons, organized anti-deportation campaigns, provided resources to “lifers,” and developed culturally relevant reentry programs. APSC grew out of the campaign to support the “San Quentin 3”—Eddy Zheng, Viet Mike Ngo, and Rico Riemedio. The San Quentin 3 advocated for Ethnic Studies at San Quentin and in retaliation by the prison administration—were sent to solitary confinement and transferred to different prisons. After spending months in solitary confinement (up to 11 months), Eddy, Mike, and Rico were released and eventually, all received parole (Eddy 2005, Rico 2007, Mike 2011).
Our mission is to eradicate abuse from the inside-out by offering a mechanism through cognitive behavioral process groups seeking to deconstruct the belief systems of those who seek power and control to maintain intimate relationships. AIDA seeks to help transform distorted thinking patterns, and introduce healthy effective relationship tools and coping mechanisms for those re-entering society. Ensuring they are equipped to engage non-abusively in a relationship and no longer pose a threat to public safety.
Lighting a path to freedom by sharing mindfulness, ethics & compassion practices with people impacted by incarceration.
California Coalition for Women Prisoners
We monitor and challenge the abusive conditions inside California women’s prisons. We fight for the release of women and trans prisoners. We support women and trans people in their process of re-entering the community.
Our mission is to work with justice-impacted individuals to eliminate recidivism and rebuild communities through empowerment, healing and personal transformation.
Our Mission is to assist people incarcerated in California prisons to a successful reentry by providing education and connect them to resources before release with the goal to reduce recidivism.
The mission of The Catalyst Foundation is to inspire transformative change. Under this umbrella we are dedicated to decreasing the impact of abuse and trauma on society and the world through direct service, public education, advocacy, policy reform and empowerment of directly affected and disenfranchised groups. We are also dedicated to improving the health and well-being of low- income, uninsured and homeless persons through outreach, education, supportive social services and connection to medical and mental healthcare. We employ a whatever it takes, for as long as it takes approach to client services.
Center for Council delivers programs and trainings that promote communication, enhance well-being, build community, and foster compassion. Our work supports a sustainable shift toward a more cooperative, creative, and engaged culture, transforming relationships, strengthening teamwork, fostering a sense of inclusion, and supporting health and wellbeing. Our methodology has proven to transform environments of anger, aggression and hostility, enabling individuals to connect with others in new and meaningful ways, creating a safe and supportive space for self-expression without fear of judgment, and supporting the development of effective communication skills, cooperation and resilience.
Choice of Freedom
Community Justice Center seeks to cultivate individual and collective well-being, shared accountability, and healing through community- driven research and evidence-based restorative processes. Programs include: 1) CJN: Community Justice Network: integrated community services that heal, guide, and elevate individuals, families and neighborhoods through a new coalition of practitioners that collectively serve together; 2) CJC/VORP: Community Justice Conferencing/VORP (Victim Offender Reconciliation Program): youth diversion initiative for youth who have caused harm to accept responsibility for harm caused through family group conferencing and mediation with the parties harmed in an effort to make things as right as possible. Youth are referred to VORP by the court, probation, schools and community agencies; 3) COSA: Circles of Support and Accountability: Restorative reentry for people who accept responsibility for harm caused and are seeking to make amends, including those who have caused sexual and other serious and violent harm.
Coaching for Healing, Justice, and Liberation
We believe that through engaging in individual and collective healing, and through the victories of social justice movements for those most-impacted by systems of oppression, we will achieve liberation for all people.
We create trauma-informed prisons and communities. We do this through trauma-awareness education and programming.
Creative Acts is an organization that seeks to transform urgent social justice issues through the revolutionary power of the Arts; to heal trauma, build community, raise power, and center the voices of those who are or have been incarcerated.
Defy’s entrepreneurial programs enable one of America’s largest forgotten communities to defy the odds. We equip them with new skills, new connections, and a new belief to match their new purpose, and succeed in their new life of economic independence.
We are on a mission to help people understand why we do what we do, using the Enneagram to inspire transformation - on both sides of the bars - through self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-compassion.
We do the work together.
Family Unity Network
It’s our mission to transform the lives of individuals impacted by incarceration through compassionate experiential education.
The Freedom Within Prison Project, also known as Freedom Within, is working to reduce recidivism and change the culture inside prisons and jails, from one of violence and gang oppression, to a place where incarcerated individuals learn to take responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions through self-awareness and emotional literacy. The impact of this work has a powerfully positive effect upon our program participants, their families, communities, and upon our society as a whole.
Prison From-TheInside-Out, Inc. is a 501c3 California based non-profit that was founded by Porshe Taylor in 2019, the organization started with the intention of bridging the gap between people in prison and non impacted people in the community with hopes of educating both parties on what is generally hidden behind the private walls and barbed wire of prisons. We acknowledged the inequalities that exist in our current carceral system and we wanted to offer services that would help this community. We recognized that FTIO uniquely had insight which carried the gift of healing. The founder being a person of direct impact via her own husband decided to use her lived experience to help. FTIO established a brick by brick method to support all who are impacted by the carceral system in hopes of a future where equality, equity, mental wellness,healing, and forgiveness is a priority.
Getting Out by Going In (GOGI) is a non-profit organization that believes every human deserves the opportunity to learn simple positive decision-making tools. Getting Out by Going In empowers the individual with the GOGI Life Tools for making positive decisions and creating a life of purpose and meaning through sustained behavioral and perspective changes.
Through an earth-based program of healing, self-actualization and connection to community and nature, Green Arrow Co-Lab provides a comprehensive gardening and mindfulness curriculum for youth and young adults who have had involvement with the justice system. Our mission is to support young people harmed by systemic injustice, structural racism and a societal disconnect as they reconnect to themselves and their future opportunities for success.
The GRIP Program is an evidence-based methodology developed over 25 years of work with thousands of incarcerated people and many victims/survivors. Rooted in Restorative Justice principles, the program’s trauma-informed model integrates cutting-edge neuroscience research. Students engage in a yearlong, in-depth journey to comprehend the origins of their violence and develop skills to track and manage strong impulses rather than acting out in harmful ways. They transform destructive beliefs and behaviors into an attitude of emotional intelligence that prevents re-victimization.
Here at Healing Dialogue and Action, we see the value in everyone. We want to be a catalyst for positive change, and since our beginnings in 2015, we’ve been driven by the same ideas we initially founded our Organization upon: supporting one another on our healing journey's. We are a California- based organization that facilitates healing with communities impacted by violence and mass incarceration. We do this through creating safe spaces for workshops, victim-offender dialogues, and by beginning a discussion regarding a more restorative approach to the criminal justice system. Healing Dialogue and Action brings together people wounded by violence and broken criminal justice systems. We share our stories and listen deeply with open hearts. We respond with compassion and accompany each other in healing the harm caused by violent crime. We work together to change the criminal justice system so it is one that respects and offers an opportunity for transformation for survivors, offenders, and families.
The Humane team believes that the right to receive compassionate end-of-life care is a basic human right — one that should be extended to everyone, including the most wounded and troubled in our society. At Humane, we strive for a world where all incarcerated people are treated with dignity and respect as they near their deaths. Our model benefits not only the dying, but their fellow incarcerated peers who provide the care and the prison correctional staff as well as they witness how transformative it can be for incarcerated individuals to care for their dying friends behind bars.
Hustle 2.0 reduces crime, violence, and recidivism by equipping incarcerated people with the motivation, knowledge, and skills to transform their lives by changing their thoughts and behaviors. Our proprietary curriculum addresses criminogenic needs by bringing evidence-based, trauma-informed concepts to life through testimonials, case studies, art, and humor contributed by people with incarceration experience. Prisons and jails across the U.S. use Hustle 2.0 to engage their program-resistant, gang-involved, substance use disorder, and close custody/restrictive housing populations in effective rehabilitation. Hustle 2.0 has program graduates at 376+ corrections facilities across 47 states. Our founders’ programs have served 15,000+ people with criminal histories and produced recidivism rates of less than 10% since 2004.
Impact Justice advances safety, justice, and opportunity through boundary-breaking work that honors and empowers people and is changing expectations about what we can accomplish together.
Initiate Justice has an inside-outside strategy where we prioritize organizing people directly impacted by incarceration, inside and outside prison walls. Most of our organizing takes place in prison visiting rooms, in front of county jails, and inside prisons themselves. We also pursue social media organizing strategies that target online groups of people with incarcerated loved ones, so that they can disseminate Initiate Justice information to their loved ones inside directly. To end incarceration in California and implement just reforms, we need the insights of people who have been directly impacted by the current system, who know where it fails and what they need to be safe and treated fairly. We also need an organized, powerful community who can engage with policymakers and design our own answers to the problems we face.
Inside Circle empowers system impacted people to lead change from within by providing opportunities for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to heal and serve both themselves and others. We exist to reduce recidivism and all forms of violence – physical, emotional, and psychological – in our prisons and communities.
Education in which we are able to encounter each other, especially across profound social barriers, is transformative and allows problems to be approached in new and different ways. Inside-Out’s mission is to create opportunities for people inside and outside of prison to have transformative learning experiences that emphasize collaboration and dialogue, inviting them to take leadership in addressing vital issues of social justice.
The mission of InsideOUT Writers is to reduce juvenile recidivism by providing a range of services that meets the unique needs of currently and formerly incarcerated youth and young adults. Using creative writing as a catalyst for personal transformation, these young people are empowered with the knowledge and skills necessary to successfully re-integrate into our communities and become advocates for their futures.
IGP’s mission is to facilitate an innovative curriculum combined with vocational gardening and landscaping training so that people in prison can reconnect to self, community, and the natural world. This “inner” and “outer” gardening approach transforms lives, ends ongoing cycles of incarceration, and creates safer communities.
Insight Prison Project was founded in 1997 with one class for 14 male prisoners at San Quentin State Prison. Today, IPP offers unique and effective programs for thousands of men, women, and youth at 7 California state prisons and one juvenile institution. Our core program is the 18-month long Victim/Offender Education Group (VOEG), which includes a curriculum that was designed by licensed mental health therapists in collaboration with survivors of violent crimes and people incarcerated for previously violent behavior. IPP provides highly trained facilitators and creates a space with VOEG that allows victims and incarcerated people an opportunity to work together, which dramatically aids in the healing process for everyone involved, and enhances public safety by greatly reducing recidivism.
Jail Guitar Doors USA works toward a more fair and just America. We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization providing musical instruments and mentorship to help rehabilitate individuals experiencing incarceration through the transformative power of music. Using the medium of collaborative music and songwriting for everyone, we strive to achieve measurable rehabilitative outcomes. We seek to advance new solutions to diminish prison violence and recidivism. We support organizations that engage in policy reform efforts and partner with social service groups to help people in prison successfully rejoin the outside world. And we actively work to educate leaders and decision-makers on how to bring real reform to the criminal justice system.
Justice Education Initiative at the Claremont Colleges
Our deep commitment to expanding educational access behind prison walls extends beyond them as well: to the equally powerful engagement of faculty, students, and community members with the profound personal impacts and societal implications of mass incarceration. Supported by a $1.1 million grant awarded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Pitzer College, the Initiative coordinates collaborative justice education programs across the Claremont Colleges, at regional carceral institutions, and with local community partners.
Our mission is to provide opportunities for personal and professional growth for justice-impacted individuals through education and technology training.
Latino Coalition for Community Leadership
The LCCL is nationally recognized as a leading community facing intermediary organization that Finds, Funds, Forms, and Features nonprofits in marginalized communities meeting the needs of individuals and families. As a community facing intermediary, the LCCL largely focuses on grassroots organizations and small to medium size nonprofits that reflect the communities they serve. The organizations are primarily led by people who live, work, worship, raise families, and recreate in the same communities they serve. The LCCL creates access to funding, provides administrative/program infrastructure, develops organizational capacity and creates a more diverse community health and safety ecosystem for the benefit of individuals and families. The LCCL has a deep expertise with programs and services that address prisoner reentry, crime victim services, violence prevention and intervention, and youth and young adults involved in the criminal justice system.
The Lionheart Foundation, established in 1992, is a 501[c][3] nonprofit organization committed to creating high impact, evidence based, social emotional learning curricula to empower prisoners, youth at risk, teenage parents, and direct care staff. Lionheart has donated over 140,000 of our resources to those who otherwise would not have had access. Lionheart’s educational programming has been integrated into thousands of prisons, juvenile institutions, social service agencies, schools, and community programs throughout the United States. At the core of everything we do is the belief that all human life has value, inherent worth, dignity, and resiliency.
With Shakespeare as our endless inspiration, our mission is to serve as a vibrant catalyst for cultural engagement, education, and social justice to benefit the people of Marin County, the San Francisco Bay Area, and beyond.
No More Tears is a collaboration between men incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison and their community. We conduct workshops to help men examine their belief systems, learn de-escalation tactics, and develop alternatives to a life of violence and crime. Find out how you can join us in our mission to restore peace and promote healing.
Our non-profit is dedicated to redefining the journey for previously incarcerated individuals through training and employment opportunities. This video gives you an inside look at the transformative impact your support can make. Every step taken is a step closer to a life renewed, offering hope, growth, and a sense of belonging. Embrace the power of change.
Paws For Life K9 Rescue saves and transforms the lives of animals and people through innovative canine-centered programs that provide purpose, support, and opportunity through the Prison/Re-Entry, People & Pet Innovation Center, First Responder and PTSD Support, Adoptions, Transports, and Vet Tech Program.
Our mission is simple… restore families that have been impacted by the carceral system.
Partnership for Re-Entry Program
Partnership for re-entry program is a restorative justice ministry in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The goals of the program are to transform the individual to become productive members of society, reducing the populations of our jails and prisons to help lessen the financial burden on taxpayers, while making our community safer and stronger.Tell people where you're from and what you do.
At The Prism Way, We: 1) Foster human connection and shared life experiences that promote empathy and a broader sense of purpose, 2) Address barriers to work, education, and housing, 3) Facilitate the repair and strengthening of relationships with self, family, and the broader community, 4) Apply a holistic approach to physical, mental, and spiritual health, one that considers all internal and external factors affecting the person, 5) Provide opportunities for those who have committed harm to cultivate transformation and practice living amends through accountability and human connection, 6) Manage all activities with integrity to make certain that funds are reinvested with the goal of reducing further harm and a return to the justice system.
Our goal is providing academic, life skills, and career development modules to the in-custody population.
Prison to Employment Connection
Our mission is connecting the currently incarcerated to employment resources they need to succeed on the outside.
Prison Yoga Project envisions a cultural-shift toward a healing-centered approach to addressing crime, substance use disorder, and mental health disorders. Our mission is to provide programs for rehabilitation and resilience rooted in yoga and embodied mindfulness.
Project PAINT creates collaborative projects, facilitates multidisciplinary visual arts workshops, provides informative lectures, organizes public art events, and imagines creative possibilities with people who are incarcerated at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, and California State Prison- Centinela in Imperial, California.
Project Rebound - Fresno State
"Project Rebound" at California State University, Fresno, stands strong alone and shines even greater together. This initiative is tailored to support formerly incarcerated individuals in their higher education journey. The program extends a comprehensive suite of services and resources, designed to ease the transition from the criminal justice system into the university setting. Project Rebound's key offerings include academic and financial counseling, assistance with admissions and enrollment, and mentorship opportunities. Beyond academia, the program also aids in securing housing, employment, and other vital resources, addressing the myriad challenges members may encounter. The primary aim of Project Rebound is to empower these individuals to attain academic success, make positive contributions to their communities, and lay the groundwork for a prosperous future.
Project Rebound - Sacramento State
Project Rebound assists students to prepare, apply, enroll, and graduate with a degree from Sacramento State. Project Rebound provides educational resources and services for students looking to develop professional skills. We work to transform those who were formerly incarcerated into scholars through counseling, mentoring, academic resources, and career development. We support students who are motivated to succeed by earning a high-quality degree from Sacramento State.
Project Rebound - San Francisco State
Project Rebound assists formerly incarcerated individuals in the process of enrolling in and attending San Francisco State University. The program’s goal is to reduce recidivism rates by supporting students throughout their education journey. By delivering extensive services that encompass education, graduation, and career-building, Project Rebound provides a transformative experience for those who wish to reinvent themselves and supports formerly incarcerated students in attaining University degrees.
Red Ladder Theatre Company is a nationally acclaimed, award-winning social justice theatre company. Formed in 1992, Red Ladder works with a wide range of under-resourced populations within the community, using the tools and techniques of improvisational theatre to help its participants develop positive life-skills. Red Ladder is founded on the understanding that the most essential component of a healthy individual is the creative spirit, and when a person’s creative impulses are revered, encouraged and nurtured, positive change occurs. By working with the professional actors in the company, participants are encouraged to engage their imaginations and envision the broadest range of possibilities for themselves.
Our mission is to facilitate a circle of intergenerational healing and support to reduce the risk of incarceration and recidivism.
Re:Store Justice
Re:Store justice was founded inside prison. They work to end life and extreme sentences by changing the way society and the legal system respond to violence & harm. They work towards healing traumas, finding lasting solutions to crime, and building safer, healthier, and more equitable communities. They advocate to ending life and extreme sentencing and mass incarceration. They also operate programs in prison such as Firstwatch, through personal narratives told from the perspective of incarcerated people, the project highlights the hidden world inside prison walls. Their Transformative Justice Class at California State Prison Lancaster project building connections inside prison by hearing stories by people sentenced to extreme prison terms and the people who are directly impacted by mass incarceration and advocating to help them. They also provide legal resources such as parole preparation.
Root & Rebound’s mission is to support people navigating reentry and reduce the harms perpetuated by mass incarceration.
BayNVC’s Safer Communities Project teaches nonviolent communication (NVC) classes in 6-month and year long courses to incarcerated people at San Quentin State Prison and in jails in Sonoma County. Our students behind prison walls learn practical skills founded in self-awareness and compassionate communication that support a shift from blame and judgment into empathic connection, authentic expression and inner freedom. Each new class participant receives an NVC textbook for the course, free of charge.
Our mission is to promote multicultural social justice, nonviolence, and economic equity through cultural healing, civic leadership, and community development.
Stronghold serves a multiracial and intersectional demographic of organizers, restorative/transformative justice practitioners, system-impacted folks, and community members through two wings of work. We serve organizations and collectives that are seeking to embed a culture of restorative and racial justice within their organizational and collective practices. We also serve community members through our public training program.
Our mission is to provide an alternative to prisons that builds safer communities by delivering feminist programming to people who have caused harm. We envision a world free of prisons and patriarchy as the dominant culture. We build a world where harmful behavior is seen as a symptom of patriarchy to be transformed, in the community, by our program and others like it.
TheatreWorkers Project is a not-for-profit collaborative that provides opportunities for members of underserved and unheard communities to tell their stories through the medium of theatre.
UnCommon Law supports people navigating California's discretionary parole process through trauma-informed legal representation, mental health counseling, legislative and policy advocacy, and in-prison programming led by those who have been through the process themselves.
Unconditional Freedom creates the conditions for the restoration of dignity to the marginalized through our Prison Monastery and Free Food Programs. Once reclaimed, we believe people naturally find the desire to contribute their unique gifts to society.
Uncuffed empowers people in prison to tell their own stories. In our training programs, participants express their humanity, develop job skills, and inspire change.
William James Association Prison Arts Project
The William James Association promotes work service in the arts, environment, education, and community development. Our work has been primarily centered around transformative arts experiences in nontraditional settings, serving men and women in and after prison and high-risk youth. Acting on the conviction that the fine arts enrich, heal and unite communities, the William James Association has brought exceptional artists into prisons throughout California and other states since 1977. The Prison Arts Project provides meaningful arts experiences for many thousands of men, women and youth in the criminal justice system. We know that the practice of making art cultivates transformation and improves lives.
Yolo Conflict Resolution Center
Yolo Conflict Resolution is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization offers free services to anyone in need of assistance with a conflict, disagreement or other situations where harm has been created. Additionally, YCRC offers training for any individuals, families, organizations or groups that would like to improve their skills in managing conflict, improving communication or anger management. YCRC also offers Restorative Justice services which allows for more accountability for those who have caused harm and addresses needs of those who have been harmed.
Please consider supporting us with cash donations or in-kind services.