Our Guiding Principles

1. Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect regardless of legal status or any personal characteristic.

2. The inhumane living conditions and degrading treatment that people in prison experience are violations of civil, constitutional, and human rights.

3. Exposing the realities experienced by people in custody creates an opportunity to address suffering, alleviate harm, and create a better future

4. To determine what change is needed and how best to achieve it, we must center the voices of people who have experienced incarceration.

5. We need to end reliance on the prison system to solve complex social issues that are made worse by mass incarceration, which is a result of endemic racism, poverty, and inequity.

6. Working to improve conditions inside carceral institutions and seeking to end reliance on incarceration are not mutually exclusive

7. All public institutions require independent oversight to promote accountability, educate the public, and advance reform.