Criminal Justice Program
AFSC's Criminal Justice Program challenges the morality and effectiveness
of the "tough on crime" mentality. The program's ultimate goal is
to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the tendency to throw people
in jail as a "solution" to crime and violence.
The program works with many groups nationwide to create a system
that is not based on prisons, jails, and executions, but on the
needs of both crime victims and perpetrators. Through publications,
radio announcements, and other media outreach, the Criminal Justice
Program alerts the public to the long-term effect of our present
system and the need to develop alternatives to incarceration.
AFSC's criminal justice work dates back to 1947, when the Service
Committee established the Prison Visiting Program at the California
Institution for Men. In the decades that followed, the program started
halfway houses in California and Iowa and began projects that focused
on alternatives to bail and community involvement in criminal justice.
In the 1970s, AFSC developed advocacy groups run by and for prisoners
and initiated a campaign to stop the construction of more prisons.
Today, the Criminal Justice Program has staff and
volunteers in Arizona, California, Maryland, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Ohio, as well
as in the national office in Philadelphia. At both the regional
and national levels, the Criminal Justice Program focuses on the
following issues:
The Death Penalty
In keeping with Quaker beliefs, the Criminal Justice Program maintains
that every person has value in the eyes of God, that human life
is sacred, and that taking the life of another human being is never
justified. The death penalty targets people who have little or no
money, which by and large means people of color and those unable
to afford defense. The death penalty does not serve as
a deterrent to crime and has been used to execute innocent people.
Finally, the death penalty takes valuable resources away from more
effective ways of combating crime. The Criminal Justice Program's
Religious Organizing
Against the Death Penalty Project has galvanized and organized
the religious community to be vocal and visible in the struggle
for death penalty abolition.
Final Exposure
In 2002, the Criminal Justice Program published an expanded second
edition of Final
Exposure: Portraits from Death Row, Lou Jones' photographic
journal of death row inmates. Through portraits of and interviews
with twenty-seven subjects, Final Exposure presents the
humanity of these men and women hidden from society. As Lou writes,
"It's easier to kill someone you don't know, someone who's just
a number. It is my hope that if you look into the eyes of the condemned
and hear their voices-if you know them-you will not be able to sanction
their state sponsored murder, regardless of their crime." The Criminal
Justice Program also sponsored the creation of a Final Exposure
exhibit, which debuted at Boston 's National Center of Afro-American
Artists in 2003 and will travel to other museums around the country
over the next several years.
"I Dream a World" Campaign
Launched on Martin Luther King Day, 2002, the "I Dream a World"
Campaign draws on Dr. King's messages of love and nonviolence to
initiate discussions about the immorality of the death penalty.
The campaign aims to involve more young people and clergy of color
in the movement to abolish the death penalty, and to expand all
people's understanding of violence to include capital punishment.
Toward these ends, the Criminal Justice Program has met with students and youth organizers, spearheading
massive letter- and postcard-writing campaigns, organizing strategy
meetings for clergy of color, and compiling religious leaders' anti-death
penalty statements for inclusion in a state-by-state guide to religious
abolitionists. 
Control Units
The term "control unit" refers to any prison or part of a prison
that operates under "super maximum security." Control units disable
prisoners through spiritual, psychological, and/or physical breakdown.
The systematic programs of oppression used in control units include
years of isolation, extremely limited access to services, physical
torture such as hog-tying, mental torture such as sensory deprivation
and enforced idleness, and sexual intimidation and violence. The Criminal
Justice Program has long resisted the use of control units by prisons
and has challenged conditions in them, as detailed in our new issue
brief, The
Prison Inside the Prison. The program currently lobbies
state legislatures on behalf of those in isolation; gathers testimony
by isolation survivors and victims; and organizes lawyers, activists,
families, and communities to oppose the use of control units.
Youth Organizing
Youth contribute vital energy to criminal justice movements. They
also have access to great organizing resources and large, often
tight-knit, young communities. The Criminal Justice Program believes
that working with youth organizers can help to fundamentally alter
the way capital punishment and the criminal justice system are understood
in the United States today. The program regularly meets with youth
groups and classes and has released an instructional packet
for students interested in organizing against the death penalty.
Youth Art & Spirituality Project
The Criminal Justice Program has developed a new model
for teen peer education on the juvenile justice system and young people within the adult justice system. In weekly
meetings with youth under 18 who are incarcerated in Philadelphia's adult jails,
the program encourages teens to express what it is like to be in
prison. Each week a different poet, painter, or graffiti or hip-hop
artist travels to the prison to facilitate a workshop. With the
work created in these sessions, the Criminal Justice Program is
developing a curriculum that can be used to replicate the workshops
across the country and a journal of the participants' art. The journal
will also feature pieces by people formerly incarcerated as juveniles
and people who have worked on issues related to youth and the criminal jutsice sytem. It will
be used to facilitate teen education workshops on the outside about
what it is like to be a young person caught in the justice system.
The Criminal Justice Program is also running concurrent workshops
that address spirituality, working with the youth "at the heart
level" on the issues surrounding being an adolescent in prison and
the issues, personal and societal, that led them to prison.
Know Your Rights
Many young people are unaware of their basic constitutional rights
and how to handle interactions with the police and other law enforcement
officials. For this reason, the Criminal Justice Program facilitates
Know Your Rights Workshops with youth groups around the country.
The workshops educate young people on their rights as individuals
living in the United States as well as on responsible ways to keep
interactions with police as safe as possible for everyone involved.
A manual on planning and conducting such workshops is slated for
publication in winter 2005.
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