Meet the Californians bringing healing and transformative programs to state prisons, and hear how a growing statewide campaign is calling for 1% of the corrections budget to be reinvested in community-run prison programs. Community Based Organizations (CBOs) put the “rehabilitation” in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation by creating spaces for people to break down racial barriers, acknowledge trauma (including the state-inflicted trauma of imprisonment), and cultivate restorative and healing environments. However, the state prison budget allocates less than half of one percent (.04%) of funds towards these critical programs. By providing people with access to healing, CBOs land a critical blow to California’s system of mass punishment.
The Transformative In-Prison Workgroup (TPW), a statewide coalition of 39 CBO organizations, has already won two budget campaigns to increase funding for programs. This year, the TPW will launch an organizing campaign to dramatically increase access to trauma-informed and transformative programming for the 126,000 individuals currently incarcerated in CA, develop a greater culture of healing in prisons, and accelerate the impact of recent sentencing reforms.
Join us for this webinar to learn from formerly incarcerated leaders and allies about the TPW and their campaign to reinvest 1% of the state budget in CBO programs. This campaign will radically change the state’s priorities to center CBOs as a pillar of health and healing in prison and emphasize TPW’s belief that communities, not incarcerators, are healers.
Speakers
- Richard Cruz, Program Manager, Ahimsa Collective, TPW Leadership Team
- Caitlin Dunklee, Robert Wood Johnson Culture of Health Fellow, TPW Coordinator
- Kenneth E. Hartman, Award-winning Author, TPW Leadership Team
- Ella Turrenne, Artist, Entrepreneur, Ph.D. Candidate in Visual Studies at UC Irvine, TPW Leadership Team
Target Audience
This program is open to NCG and California Criminal Justice Funders members.
