Criminal Justice Resources
If you have a loved one in prison or jail, the following criminal justice resources can help you discover ways to support them and learn how to cope with their incarceration, as well as find out about efforts for criminal justice reform and advocacy for incarcerated veterans.
Incarcerated Veterans
Find out about the benefits and programs available for justice-involved Veterans including what VA benefits they may still eligible to receive, what happens to the VA benefits they are already receiving if they become incarcerated, and what programs are available once released.
Learn what happens to a veteran’s benefits if he/she is incarcerated on Military.com. This website provides a summary of how imprisonment affects veterans benefits including Tricare, Disability, Education and more.
Planning for Your Release: A Guide for Incarcerated Veterans by the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans includes websites, addresses and phone numbers you can use to find our about programs and other help that is available after release.
Expunge US Veterans is a nonprofit organization helping veterans seal and/or expunge minor criminal histories at no cost. They strive to restore honor and dignity to our nation’s veterans by making sealing/expungement accessible to veterans who cannot otherwise afford it.
Justice For Vets is a division of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, a nonprofit dedicated to educating and offering technical assistance to drug court, DWI court, and veterans treatment court professionals.
The Veterans Board of Appeals involves claims for veteran benefits including disability compensation, and also reviews appeals involving other types of veteran benefits such as insurance benefits and educational benefits, home loan guaranties, pension benefits, and more.
Criminal Justice Reform
The Sentencing Project works 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.
The Vera Institute of Justice works to tackle the most pressing injustices of our day—from the causes and consequences of mass incarceration, racial disparities, and the loss of public trust in law enforcement, to the unmet needs of the vulnerable, the marginalized, and those harmed by crime and violence.
Urban is identifying and evaluating the most promising policies for reducing mass incarceration. Their research explores how to maintain and promote public safety while reducing costs and creating a more equitable and effective criminal justice system.
To document and publicize how mass incarceration punishes our entire society, the non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative produces cutting edge research to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and then spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society.
The American Legislative Exchange Council task force on criminal justice combats the trend of unforgiving and harsh criminal laws, focusing on policies that reduce prison populations, prioritize criminal justice spending and help rehabilitate and restore offenders’ lives.
With a deep passion for justice and reforming our legal system, the Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing, supports exonerees as they rebuild their lives post-release and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
Believing communities are safest when the criminal justice system respects human dignity, the Charles Koch Institute focuses on areas with greatest impact on criminal justice reform: policing practices; overcriminalization; due process; sentencing; and second chances.
The Brennan Center’s Justice seeks to secure our nation’s promise of “equal justice for all” by creating a rational, effective, and fair justice system. Its priority is to reduce mass incarceration while keeping down crime with innovative solutions to advance this critical goal.
Education in Prison
PrisonEducation.com advocates the expansion of educational opportunities for prisoners across the United States and abroad. They regularly publish academic articles by experts in the field. Both prison writers and prison educators contribute to this resource; they believe that education is an inalienable human right, not a privilege.
The Prison Studies Project is compiling the first nationwide directory of higher education in prison programs in U.S. prisons. Searchable and continually updated, the directory is an online, state-by-state listing of primarily on-site degree-granting postsecondary education programs in prisons.
The Marshall Project has been curating some of the best criminal justice reporting from around the web. On this website you will find the most recent and the most authoritative articles on the topics, people and events that are shaping the criminal justice conversation.
Human Rights in Prison
The UNODC promotes the use of training manuals and the adoption of codes of conduct and standards and norms that aim to guarantee that the accused, the guilty and the victims can all rely on a criminal justice system that is fair and grounded on human rights values.
Human Rights Watch is a human rights organization that produces excellent reports on abuses in U.S. prisons, and tracks prison conditions and the treatment of prisoners around the world.
Prison Legal News is a project of the Human Rights Defense Center a nonprofit human rights organization that zealously advocates, educates, and litigates on issues pertaining to constitutional rights, especially on issues affecting individuals at all stages of the criminal justice system from initial police-citizen encounter to post-incarceration release.
This is the official website of Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo’s ground-breaking 1971 experiment, The Stanford Prison Experiment, that substantiated the harmful effects on both guards and prisoners after exposure to a prison environment for only a few days.
Prison Legal Resources
Written and updated by members of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual is a handbook of legal rights and procedures designed for use by people in prison. Since publication of the First Edition in 1978, tens of thousands of prisoners in institutions across the country have used A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual to exercise their legal rights.
The ACLU National Prison Project is dedicated to ensuring that our nation’s prisons, jails, and other 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.
Pace Law School Library: Prisoners’ Rights Law Resources is a gateway to information on prisoners’ rights, including federal, state, and international primary and secondary sources, in print and online, with a particular focus on special populations and topical issues.
Support
The Prison Talk Online web community was conceived in a prison cell, designed in a halfway house, and funded by donations from families of ex-offenders, to bring those with an interest in the prisoner support community a forum in which their issues and concerns may be addressed by others in similar circumstances and beliefs.
The American Academy of Bereavement takes the responsibility for promoting standards of excellence in bereavement care. They embrace interdisciplinary communication and collaboration as essential to assuring the highest level of care is given to those affected by death, loss and serious illness as well as to those grieving an incarcerated loved one.