Executive Summary

Initiate Justice’s mission is to end mass incarceration in California by activating the power of the people it directly impacts. We are building a transformative, abolitionist movement by developing the leadership of currently and formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones, who have the most crucial first-hand knowledge and experience. The act of incarceration is punitive beyond what was originally intended. The tears of every child, spouse, parent, sibling or friend can attest to the intergenerational pain felt from the systemically orchestrated, and often unjust, loss of a loved one to the prison system.

Our co-founders realized that people in prison and their loved ones often felt powerless, and uninformed about how they could positively engage with and shape the systems that impact their lives. We have developed into a statewide movement reaching over 60,000 incarcerated members, 650 trained organizers inside and outside prisons, 2,000 supporters and allies outside of prisons, and their family and loved ones. We currently engage in four main areas of work:

* Inside Organizing – Training incarcerated people to be civically involved change agents, while providing consistent information and tools for advocacy, systemic change and transformative justice.

* Outside Organizing – Our Institute of Impacted Leaders provides leadership training and policy advocacy education to formerly incarcerated people and people with incarcerated loved ones.

* Narrative Change – Shifting our culture toward abolition and transformative justice by uplifting the experiences of impacted people.

* Policy Change – Ensuring that people impacted by incarceration are centered in criminal justice reform efforts.

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