To Shoot a Kite: Additional Resources
This is a list of select resources for readers who wish to learn about additional activist initiatives and organizations working to raise awareness and alleviate the effects of mass incarceration.
Ban the Box
A campaign working to open up employment opportunities to individuals with past convictions.
www.bantheboxcampaign.org
Books Through Bars
A program that distributes books and educational materials to incarcerated individuals in the Mid-Atlantic region, prison libraries across the country, and halfway houses throughout the greater Philadelphia area.
www.booksthroughbars.org
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Collects, analyzes, publishes, and disseminates information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government.
www.bjs.gov
California Coalition for Women Prisoners
A grassroots organization that challenges the institutional violence imposed on women, transgender people, and communities of color by the prison industrial complex.
www.womenprisoners.org
California Prison Focus
An effort that works to abolish the California prison system in its present condition, and investigates and exposes human rights abuses with the goal of ending long-term isolation, medical neglect, and all forms of discrimination.
www.prisons.org
California Prison Moratorium Project
An organization seeking to stop all public and private prison construction in California, and advocating diverting public funds to pursue alternatives to imprisonment.
www.calipmp.org
Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement
A campaign working for sweeping reform of New York’s use of solitary confinement and other forms of extreme isolation in state prisons and local jails.
www.nycaic.org
Center on Wrongful Convictions
A legal clinic at Northwestern University that provides legal representation and research with the aim to free wrongfully convicted individuals.
www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions
Correctional Association
A nonprofit organization granted authority by NY State to inspect prisons and report its findings and recommendations to the public, with a goal to educate and advocate for a humane and effective criminal justice system.
www.correctionalassociation.org
Critical Resistance
A national, member-based grassroots organization that works to build a mass movement to dismantle the prison industrial complex.
www.criticalresistance.org
Education Justice Project
An academic community committed to expanding higher education within American prisons as a matter of justice.
www.educationjustice.net
Equal Justice USA
A national, grassroots organization working to build a criminal justice system that is fair, effective, and responsive to everyone impacted by crime.
www.ejusa.org
Holler to the Hood
A multi-media human rights project designed to foster collaboration and communication between urban and rural communities. The project was initiated by Appalshop artists in response to the growing prison boom in the economically distressed central Appalachian coalfields.
www.appalshop.org/h2h/about.htm
Incarcerated Nation Campaign
A movement working to combat the inhumane and counterproductive treatment of people during and after their time incarcerated, and promote more conscious and effective ways to address the incarceration and re-entry of our citizens.
www.incarceratednationcampaign.org
The Innocence Project
A national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing, and to reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
www.innocenceproject.org
International Coalition to Free the Angola 3
A campaign seeking the immediate release of Albert Woodfox, an innocent man and the sole member of the Angola 3 still in solitary confinement more than 41 years after his wrongful conviction.
www.angola3.org
Justice Mapping Center
A program specializing in the use of computer mapping (GIS) to help better understand, evaluate, and communicate criminal justice and other social policy information.
www.justicemapping.org
Justice Now
A law clinic that partners with people in women's prisons and local communities to build a safe, compassionate world without prisons.
www.jnow.org
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
LSPC organizes communities impacted by the criminal justice system and advocates to release incarcerated people, to restore human and civil rights, and to reunify families and communities.
www.prisonerswithchildren.org
Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation
A community led by family members of murder victims and the executed that advocates for the repeal of the death penalty.
www.mvfr.org
National ACLU: Prisoners Rights
A project dedicated to ensuring that our nation’s places of detention comply with the Constitution, domestic law, and international human rights principles, and to ending the policies that have given the U.S. the highest incarceration rate in the world.
www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights
National Religious Campaign Against Torture
An organization that mobilizes people of faith to end torture in U.S. policy, practice, and culture.
www.nrcat.org
NYCLU Boxed In
A project aimed at raising public awareness to the use and consequences of extreme isolation in New York, and pushing for system-wide reform.
www.boxedinny.org
Open Society Foundations
The OSF supports global criminal justice reform by developing alternatives to pretrial detention, broadening access to competent legal representation, and promoting new alliances for reform.
www.opensocietyfoundations.org/topics/criminal-justice
Pelican Bay Hunger Strike Solidarity
A coalition committed to amplifying the voices of and supporting the prisoners at Pelican Bay and other CA prisons while on hunger strike to protest the continued use of solitary confinement.
http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com
PEN American Center’s Prison Writing Program
A program that guides, publishes, and promotes writing authored by incarcerated individuals.
www.pen.org/prison-writing
Prison Activist Resource Center
A prison abolitionist group committed to exposing and challenging the institutionalized racism, sexism, able-ism, heterosexism, and classism of the prison industrial complex.
www.prisonactivist.org
The Prison Arts Coalition
An independent platform providing information and resources for people creating art in and around the American prison system.
www.theprisonartscoalition.com
Prison Photography
A website featuring photography projects in sites of incarceration around the world.
www.prisonphotography.org
Prison Policy Initiative
An organization that produces cutting edge research to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization, and then sparks advocacy campaigns to create a more just society.
www.prisonpolicy.org
Project NIA
A grassroots effort to dramatically reduce the reliance on arrest, detention and incarceration for addressing youth crime and to instead promote the use of restorative and transformative practices.
www.project-nia.org
Race Forward
An organization with the mission to build awareness, solutions and leadership for racial justice by generating transformative ideas, information, and experiences.
www.raceforward.org
The Real Cost of Prisons
A national organization working to broaden and deepen the organizing capacity of prison/justice activists and people directly experiencing the impact of mass incarceration.
www.realcostofprisons.org
Restorative Justice Online
A non-partisan resource on restorative justice – a theory of justice that emphasizes repairing the harm caused or revealed by criminal behavior through cooperative processes that include all stakeholders.
www.restorativejustice.org
Resurrection After Exoneration
An organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of exonerees after incarceration by assisting them during their transition process to ensure a successful reentry, and by empowering them to confront and reform the system that victimized them.
www.r-a-e.org/home
The Sentencing Project
A leading organization working for a fair and effective U.S. criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addressing unjust racial disparities and practices, and advocating for alternatives to incarceration.
www.sentencingproject.org
Solitary Watch
A web-based project aimed at bringing the widespread use of solitary confinement out of the shadows and into the light by providing vital information and reporting.
www.solitarywatch.com
Tamms Year Ten
A coalition that came together to protest the misguided and inhumane policies at Tamms supermax, and end the use of long-term isolation in Illinois.
www.yearten.org
Victim Offender Mediation Association
An organization that provides resources, training, and technical assistance in victim-offender mediation, conferencing, circles, and related restorative justice practices.
www.voma.org
Voice of the Ex-Offender (V.O.T.E)
A grassroots, membership based organization that builds the political and economic power of people most critically impacted by the criminal justice system, especially formerly incarcerated persons (FIPs), their families and loved ones.
www.vote-nola.org