Led by members of our Empathy Network, we have launched Dignity for Incarcerated Women campaigns, improving living conditions for more than 30,000 women incarcerated in 14 states. We’ve spearheaded historic bipartisan federal reform legislation, including the First Step Act, that has brought more than 18,000 people home from behind bars.
The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and both Republicans and Democrats agree we need solutions to safely and smartly reduce the prison population. Dream.Org’s Empathy Network works with directly impacted people and with politicians from both parties on strategic state and federal campaigns and policies designed to end the era of mass incarceration and strengthen our communities. Our issue areas include sentencing reform, conditions of confinement, economic empowerment for returning citizens, and drug policy.
This year, we are working on policy campaigns in nine states: Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin. We are partnering with directly impacted Empathy Network leaders on the ground in every state, each of whom went through our summer advocacy training program in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
The most powerful voices in the fight for criminal justice reform are often those most impacted by the broken system. To amplify those voices we built the Empathy Network, America’s largest bipartisan community of formerly incarcerated activists, families and allies. Empathy Network leaders & members are on the front lines of our campaigns, our local partners on the ground, and our most effective messengers in Washington, D.C.
Learn more about the Empathy Network and how you can get involved in our national and local campaigns, and our training programs - including our summer-long advocacy cohort and young adult cohort.
The United States spends more than $90 billion a year on jail, prison, probation, and parole to terrible results - horrific prison conditions rife with human rights abuses and high recidivism rates. It is time to disrupt the incarceration industry — and replace it with a decarceration industry. This monumental task will require, at its core, “justice innovation.”
Watch our Justice Innovation Prize mini-documentary!
It is time to leverage the power of technology, finance and community wisdom. By doing so, we can cut incarceration rates, crime and wasted taxpayer dollars. This new sector will bring promising tech into the criminal justice conversation, while growing a new intellectual and financial space.
At Dream.Org, we know that those who are closest to the problem are often those closest to the solution. That's why we created the Dream Justice Cohort, a training program created to provide justice-impacted leaders with the skills they need to change the criminal justice system – from organizing and advocacy to media skills.
Participants are joined by our talented staff and previous cohort graduates and receive the most innovative training for justice leaders across the country.
In 2024 in partnership with the NBA Foundation we created the Justice Next Cohort – a skill-building and leadership development program to empower and equip the next generation of young adults who are impacted by the criminal justice system or the climate crisis.
The Public Health is Public Safety Campaign is a multi-year initiative to reduce overdoses by promoting solutions that help people safely recover – because harsh punishment isn’t just inhumane – it also doesn’t work.
We are changing the narrative around drug use by building a strong coalition to support these life-saving efforts. Together, we can raise awareness, promote harm reduction, and advocate for policies that create a safer environment for people who use drugs, reduce the number of overdose deaths, and avoid sending more people to over-burdened jails and prisons.
