Sentencing & Incarceration Alternatives (2000-2008)

Note: The Criminal Justice Fund is no longer accepting funding requests through the Sentencing & Incarceration Alternatives Project.

Please check this website in 2010 for revised grantmaking priorities and guidelines for submitting letters of inquiry to the Criminal Justice Fund. Requests for funding received before the new guidelines are issued will not be considered.

In an effort to facilitate more coordinated grantmaking and other programmatic activities, U.S. Programs merged four projects focused on criminal justice reform into a single Criminal Justice Fund.

The Sentencing & Incarceration Alternatives Project (the Alternatives Project) sought to reduce the scale of incarceration in the United States. Radical increases in rates of incarceration and increasingly severe criminal punishments threaten open society values by building a permanent underclass in the United States defined largely by race and income. To counter this trend, the Alternatives Project supported advocates, researchers, and practitioners advancing campaigns, research initiatives, and policies that seek to:

eliminate race and class disparities in sentencing and incarceration;
reduce the length of criminal sentences and promote judicial discretion in sentencing;
promote alternatives to incarceration that emphasize rehabilitation and treatment;
limit prison growth and prison privatization; and
empower communities most affected by mass incarceration to develop and advocate for alternative policies that address underlying social, racial and economic inequality.