Our Approach

We approach our work through the lenses of gender, racial, disability, and LGBTQIA+ justice. We draw from the traditions and lessons of these movements to understand how power and identity shape people’s experiences within the criminal legal system.

Gender justice challenges patriarchy and the systems that have ignored, controlled, and devalued girls, women, and gender-expansive people. It recognizes that gender shapes every stage of the criminal legal system, from pathways into incarceration to conditions inside and barriers after release.

For us, that means our community’s leadership and lived experience are not an afterthought. They are the starting point.

Racial justice recognizes that the criminal legal system did not develop separately from this country’s history of slavery, and segregation. Those histories still shape who is criminalized, how people are treated, and what opportunities they have after release.

For us, that means naming those realities and challenging the policies and practices that continue to produce racial inequity.

Disability justice recognizes that disability cannot be separated from race, gender, poverty, sexuality, or incarceration. It was developed by disabled organizers, especially queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, who understood that access alone was not enough.

For us, that means treating access as a shared responsibility and making room for different bodies, minds, needs, and ways of participating. Our understanding is informed by the Ten Principles of Disability Justice articulated by Sins Invalid.

LGBTQIA+ justice recognizes that queer people often face rejection, violence, discrimination, and criminalization long before incarceration, and that those harms can continue inside prisons, jails, and detention facilities.

For us, that means creating spaces where people are respected as they are, honoring names, pronouns, identities, relationships, and chosen families, and challenging policies that punish gender and sexual nonconformity.