An Introduction to the Topic

A more in-depth look.

National Prison Project The National Prison Project is a program of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that focuses on the protection of human rights in American prisons, jails, and detention centers. The National Prison Project works on several issues including patient medical and mental health care, solitary confinement, incarceration conditions, civil liberties, and female prisoner issues. The ACLU provides access to several of its publications on its website, including False Hope: How Parole Systems Fail Youth Serving Extreme Sentences, The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States, and Shutting Down the Profiteers: Why and How the Department of Homeland Security Should Stop Using Private Prisons.

The Prison Fellowship is a Christian ministry that works with prisoners, former prisoners, and their families to support community efforts to end the cycle of crime and incarceration. The Prison Fellowship website provides tool kits, videos, news, press releases, fact sheets, and reports on criminal justice issues including sentencing, incarceration conditions, juvenile justice, and collateral consequences.

The Sentencing Project opposes mandatory sentences and works to develop alternative sentencing programs that would provide constructive options to incarceration. It publishes the reports Americans Behind Bars: A Comparison of International Rates of Incarceration and Young Black Men and the Criminal Justice System: A Growing National Problem.