The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a nonprofit organization that brings together state legislators and private sector representatives to develop and promote model legislation. While it has its supporters, there are several criticisms associated with ALEC: 1. **Corporate Influence**: Critics argue that ALEC allows corporations to have significant influence over state legislation. This can lead to policies that favor corporate interests over the public good, potentially undermining democratic processes. 2. **Lack of Transparency**: ALEC operates with a level of secrecy that some find concerning. The closed-door meetings and lack of public access can lead to a perception that legislation is being crafted without adequate public scrutiny. 3. **Standardization of Laws**: ALEC promotes model bills that can be adopted by multiple states, which may lead to a homogenization of laws that don’t necessarily reflect the unique needs and values of individual states. 4. **Polarization**: Some argue that ALEC contributes to political polarization by promoting a specific ideological agenda, which can create divisions among legislators and between parties. 5. **Impact on Social Issues**: ALEC has been associated with promoting legislation on controversial issues such as voter ID laws, gun rights, and tax cuts. Critics argue that these policies may disproportionately impact marginalized communities. 6. **Environmental Concerns**: ALEC has been criticized for promoting legislation that favors fossil fuel industries, which some believe hampers efforts to address climate change and protect the environment. 7. **Education Policies**: The organization has also been involved in promoting school choice and charter school legislation, which some believe undermines public education funding and may lead to increased inequality in educational access. These points highlight some of the concerns people have regarding ALEC and its influence on state-level policy making. It’s important to consider multiple perspectives when evaluating its impact!

Critical Resistance’s vision is the creation of genuinely healthy, stable communities that respond to harm without relying on imprisonment and punishment. We call our vision abolition, drawing, in part from the legacy of the abolition of slavery in the 1800s. As PIC abolitionists we understand that the prison industrial complex is not a broken system to be fixed. The system, rather, works precisely as it is designed to—to contain, control, and kill those people representing the greatest threats to state power. Our goal is not to improve the system even further, but to shrink the system into non-existence. We work to build healthy, self-determined communities and promote alternatives to the current system. Critical Resistance (CR) is building a grassroots movement to challenge the use of punishment to “cure” complicated social problems. We know that more policing and imprisonment will not make us safer. Instead, we know that things like food, housing, and freedom are what create healthy, stable neighborhoods and communities. We work to prevent people from being arrested or locked up in prison. In all our work, we organize to build power and to stop the devastation that the reliance on imprisonment and policing has brought to ourselves, our families, and our communities.

Our vision is a world free of modern slavery and human trafficking We educate and empower our community on the realities of modern slavery and mobilise to create systemic change. We do this by making key stakeholders our allies in the fight against modern slavery. Survivor advocates are vital to ending modern slavery. Through our My Story, My Dignity Pledge we have committed to ensuring that the images and language used to tell the stories of people with lived experiences of modern slavery are accurate and dignified.

The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) works to reduce incarceration and violence, improve the outcomes of system-involved youth and adults, and increase the capacity and expertise of the organizations that serve these individuals. NICJR provides technical assistance, consulting, research, organizational development, and advocacy in the fields of juvenile and criminal justice, youth development, and violence prevention. NICJR works with an array of organizations, including government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and philanthropic foundations.

All our work is based on high-quality research; on the experiences of our members in prison, prison leavers and their families; on insights gleaned from people working in criminal justice and related areas; and on the information provided by children and young people calling our advice line.

Breaking the cycle of crime by strengthening families through education, advocacy, and organizing. About 200,000 adult men and women are incarcerated at any one time in county jails and state correctional facilities in Texas. The state has the unenviable distinction of having more individuals behind bars than any other state in the country. Left behind are family members and friends: 55 percent leave behind a spouse, and 85 percent or more leave behind a parent and/or a child. In fact, about 75 percent of male inmates and more than 95 percent of female inmates have a child younger than 18. More than half have a child younger than 10.

Please send us more organizations you feel should be added to our growing Watchlist!

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.

Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons. We challenge the death penalty and excessive punishment and we provide re-entry assistance to formerly incarcerated people. EJI works with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment. We are committed to changing the narrative about race in America. EJI produces groundbreaking reports, an award-winning calendar, and short films that explore our nation’s history of racial injustice. And in 2018, we opened the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice as part of our national effort to create new spaces, markers, and memorials that address the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, which shapes many issues today. EJI provides research and recommendations to assist advocates and policymakers in the critically important work of criminal justice reform. We publish reports, discussion guides, and other educational materials, and our staff conduct educational tours and presentations for thousands of students, teachers, faith leaders, professional associations, community groups, and international visitors every year.

Gideon’s Promise is a nonprofit public defender organization whose mission is to transform the criminal justice system by building a movement of public defenders who provide equal justice for marginalized communities.

The non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative produces cutting edge research to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization, and then sparks advocacy campaigns to create a more just society. OUR ROLE IN THE MOVEMENT The Prison Policy Initiative's research and advocacy is at the center of the national conversation about criminal justice reform and over-criminalization. Because essential national and state level data is often completely inaccessible, the Prison Policy Initiative's insightful data analysis and powerful graphics help fill these gaps to bring in new supporters and help other movement leaders achieve their goals.

Mission Statement The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We have an impact on the system through journalism, rendering it more fair, effective, transparent and humane.

Mass incarceration robs people of dignity and tears at the fabric of communities. Vera brings researchers, organizers, and government leaders together to create evidence-based solutions that restore communities and end mass incarceration. When a solution works, we scale it nationwide.

Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE) is a grassroots organization that was founded in Texas in 1972. It became a national organization in 1985. We believe that prisons should be used only for those who absolutely must be incarcerated and that those who are incarcerated should have all of the resources they need to turn their lives around. We also believe that human rights documents provide a sound basis for ensuring that criminal justice systems meet these goals. CURE is a membership organization. We work hard to provide our members with the information and tools necessary to help them understand the criminal justice system and to advocate for changes. Read about the history of CURE and its role for over fifty years in advocating for reform of prisons and jails.

Fighting Unjust Sentencing and Prison Policies Since 1991 In 1990, Julie Stewart was public affairs director at the Cato Institute when she learned of mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Her brother had been arrested for growing marijuana in Washington State, pled guilty, and — though this was his first offense — was sentenced to five years in federal prison without parole. The judge criticized the punishment as too harsh, but the mandatory minimum law left him no choice. Motivated by her family’s experience, Julie founded FAMM in 1991. The organization is committed to nonpartisanship and embraces the value of racial, cultural, and political diversity in its advocacy. FAMM’s greatest asset has always been the stories of its members. By sharing the impact of unjust sentencing and prison policies on incarcerated individuals, their families, and their communities, FAMM has helped create urgency around the issue and made the problem feel real to policymakers who have to be moved to make meaningful change. To learn more, please watch this video celebrating our 30th anniversary and the history lying between past and present.

We work to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone.

REFORM Alliance aims to transform probation and parole by changing laws, systems and culture to create real pathways to work and wellbeing. A justice system that holds people accountable and redirects back to work and wellbeing leads to stronger families and safer communities. Instead of keeping people trapped in a revolving door from probation/parole to prison — which costs taxpayers billions of dollars — we’re working to move people from the justice system into stability. Our History REFORM’s story starts with the unjust re-imprisonment of recording artist Meek Mill. The shocking two-to-four year sentence he received for popping a wheelie spurred the international #FreeMeek movement, which led to release on bail and eventually his freedom. Although Meek had the resources and public platform to fight his case, his case is only one of millions. The vast majority of people trapped in the system don’t get their stories told, or have the resources to fight back. On January 23, 2019, a world-class group of philanthropists and activists came together to launch the REFORM Alliance to change this.

The U.S. prison population has grown nearly 500% in the past fifty years. Increasingly, punitive changes in sentencing laws and policies, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. Despite increasing evidence that large-scale incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety, these trends have resulted in dangerous prison overcrowding as well as weighty fiscal burdens on taxpayers to accommodate a rapidly expanding penal system. Mission The Sentencing Project advocates for effective and humane responses to crime that minimize imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults by promoting racial, ethnic, economic, and gender justice. Core policy priorities Our policy priorities envision the full inclusion in society of people with criminal records and an end to extreme punishments. Our aim is to center the leadership, voices, vision, and experience of those directly affected by mass incarceration to make the rationale for systemic change vivid, credible, and compelling. These priorities are central to our fundamental underlying goal of promoting racial justice by focusing on the cornerstones of the criminal legal system that act to undermine the power of the Black community and ensure that Black community members are drawn into the criminal legal system and incapacitated for years, decades, and often life.

WPA empowers women to redefine their lives in the face of injustice and incarceration. Together, we forge pathways toward freedom, safety, and independence.