The U.S. Programs Criminal Justice Fund seeks to reduce the destructive impact of current criminal justice policies on the lives of individuals, families, and communities in the United States by challenging the overreliance on incarceration and harsh punishment, and ensuring a fair and equitable system of justice.

The fund supports policy advocacy, impact litigation, strategic research and analysis, public education, and community organizing and coalition-building efforts to:

• Attack the excessive and economically destructive costs of incarceration
• Eliminate harsh and unjust sentencing practices
• Reform parole and probation policies and practices
• Foster new approaches to drug policy
• Combat the criminalization of marginalized populations, such as people with mental illness, young people, immigrants, and the homeless
• End punitive school disciplinary policies
• Challenge the stigmatization of people with criminal records and eliminate unreasonable barriers to social, economic and political participation they face
• End the treatment of children as adults in prosecution and sentencing
• Abolish the death penalty
• Reform police and prosecution practices
• Improve indigent defense services and systems

For more information, see the Criminal Justice Fund grant guidelines.