This month, we’re highlighting clients who are rethinking justice and the criminal legal system. Their work runs from courtrooms and parole hearings to 311 calls and immigration detention centers. These organizations do more than push back on a broken status quo: they train the advocates who stand beside people in the system, build care-based alternatives to arrest and incarceration, and organize the communities most affected to lead the way toward something better.
Here’s a quick look at how they’re reimagining what justice can look like.
Clients Featured: Detention Watch Network, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Gideon’s Promise, Parole Advocates, Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative (PAD)
Detention Watch Network
Location: Washington, D.C.
Detention Watch Network seeks to end the cruel system of immigration detention via programs of grassroots organizing, strategic communications, and collective advocacy.
DWN is the only national network focused exclusively on immigration detention. It brings together diverse constituencies to advance the civil and human rights of people affected by the detention system. Its members work at the local, national, and international levels. DWN aims to remove one of the drivers of mass deportation while also confronting the broader role of incarceration and criminalization in U.S. society.
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights advances racial and economic justice to ensure dignity and opportunity for low-income people and people of color.
Founded in 1996, the center grew out of Bay Area PoliceWatch, a project created to document and challenge human rights abuses in the criminal justice system. Over three decades it has run campaigns such as Books Not Bars, which focused on California’s youth prisons. Today it is building a membership-based movement for justice reinvestment, which means shifting resources away from prisons and punishment and toward the communities most affected by them.
Gideon’s Promise
Location: Atlanta, GA
The mission of Gideon’s Promise is to transform the criminal legal system by building a movement of public defenders who provide equal justice for marginalized communities.
Since its creation in 2007, Gideon’s Promise has trained and supported more than 1,500 public defenders nationwide. The organization sees public defenders as the main engine of change in the system, so it gives them training, mentorship, and a supportive community. That support is especially important in under-resourced offices, where crushing caseloads can make quality representation nearly impossible.
Parole Advocates, Inc.
Location: Atlanta, GA
Their mission is to advocate for the rights of incarcerated individuals, particularly the elderly and ill. They aim to facilitate their successful reentry into society through parole assistance. By providing support and resources, they strive to promote dignity and justice.
Parole Advocates works with people in Georgia prisons who have shown real transformation during their time inside. Volunteer attorneys represent clients through the parole process, and the team builds a tailored reentry plan for each person so they can return home safely and with dignity.
Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative (PAD)
Location: Atlanta, GA
The Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative works to reduce arrest and incarceration of people experiencing extreme poverty, problematic substance use, or mental health concerns, and increase the accessibility of supportive services in Atlanta.
PAD began in 2017 and accepts referrals from Atlanta Police, MARTA, and Georgia Tech officers. When someone would otherwise be booked into the city or county jail, officers can call PAD instead. PAD also offers a non-police first response for community concerns through 311, and its services are grounded in harm reduction and housing first.
