Community Organizer and Author

While countless books, articles, and films discuss prisons, surprisingly little basic information is available about the various aspects of the system and how they interact. Craig Gilmore’s Prison FAQs is a multimedia project that aims to fill this gap and satisfy a pressing need in the prison reform movement. Covering a variety of topics (“The Costs of Prisons,” “Prison Towns,” “Race and Prisons,” “Types of Custody,” “Probation and Parole,” “Gender and Prison,” “Civil Commitment”), Prison FAQs will offer a comprehensive but accessible primer on the prison system, its components, and social issues relevant to life in and out of prison.

Gilmore is an organizer with the California Prison Moratorium Project, which he co-founded in 1998. He is a regular contributor to Prison Focus and is co-author with Kevin Pyle of The Real Cost of Prisons Project comic book Prison Town: Paying the Price and other essays. He lectures widely on a range of subjects, including the impact of prisons on towns where they are based, prisons and environmental justice, and prison financing. He has been active for years in Californians United for a Responsible Budget, the No New Jails Coalition, and LA Prison Times newspaper. Gilmore is a board member of A New Way of Life Reentry Project in Los Angeles and in 2003 was awarded the Ralph Santiago Abascal Award for Environmental Justice Activism.

Los Angeles, CA