Restorative and Transformative Justice Resources

Bay Area Organizations

All of Us or None Committed to organizing formerly-incarcerated people to build a movement in Oakland, by working in coalition with other community groups and organizing campaigns, such as Ban the Box and Clean Slate.
Creative Interventions Established as a resource center to create and promote community-based responses to interpersonal violence. Embracing the values of social justice and liberation, Creative Interventions is a space to re/envision solutions to domestic or intimate partner, sexual, family and other forms of interpersonal violence.
Critical Resistance - Oakland Chapter Seeks to build an international movement to end the prison industrial complex (PIC) by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.
Community United Against Violence (CUAV) Founded in 1979, CUAV works to build the power of LGBTQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning) communities to transform violence and oppression. We support the healing and leadership of those impacted by abuse and mobilize our broader communities to replace cycles of trauma with cycles of safety and liberation. As part of the larger social justice movement, CUAV works to create truly safe communities where everyone can thrive.
Ella Baker Center Offers smart solutions and uplifting alternatives to violence and incarceration. Books Not Bars organizes the largest network of families of incarcerated youth and champion alternatives to California’s costly, broken prison system. Heal the Streets trains Oakland youth to become community leaders and peace advocates.
Generation FIVE Through survivor and bystander leadership development, community prevention and intervention, public action, and cross-movement building, generationFIVE works to interrupt and mend the intergenerational impact of child sexual abuse on individuals, families, and communities.
Insight Prison Project For over fifteen years, Insight Prison Project has been on a mission to foster insight and lasting behavioral change by providing rehabilitative tools to prisoners in California correctional systems. IPP’s programs are conducted by crime victims, community volunteers and prisoners themselves – a rare and effective response to our statewide prison crisis and to the needs of prisoners, parolees, crime survivors, correctional staff and our California communities.
Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women Founded by Rhodessa Jones to explore whether an arts-based approach could help reduce the numbers of women returning to jail.
Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth Founded in 2005, RJOY works to interrupt these cycles by promoting institutional shifts toward restorative approaches that actively engage families, communities, and systems to repair harm and prevent re-offending. RJOY focuses on reducing racial disparities and public costs associated with high rates of incarceration, suspension, and expulsion. We provide education, training, and technical assistance and collaboratively launch demonstration programs with our school, community, juvenile justice, and research partners.
Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP) The mission of the San Francisco Sheriffs Department's Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP) is to bring together all those harmed by crime, including victims, communities, and offenders. RSVP is driven by victim restoration, offender accountability, and community involvement.
Youth Uprising Envisions a healthy and economically robust East Oakland powered by the leadership of youth and young adults as well as improvements in systems and environments that impact them. Our primary focus is building a systems change and community economic development platform that supports and strengthens our personal transformation work.

National Organizations

Critical Resistance Seeks to build an international movement to end the prison industrial complex (PIC) by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.
Homeboy Industries We help formerly gang involved and the recently incarcerated, by offering hope, training and job skills.
INCITE Women of Color Against Violence National activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and our communities through direct action, critical dialogue, and grassroots organizing.
Philly Stands Up We are a group dedicated to dealing with (sexual) consent, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and community accountability through transformative justice. We work nationally, but are rooted and dedicated to organizing in Philadelphia.
TGI Justice Project Group of transgender people—inside and outside of prison—creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom. We work in collaboration with others to forge a culture of resistance and resilience to strengthen us for the fight against imprisonment, police violence, racism, poverty, and societal pressures.
Women and Girls Collective Action Network--Community Accountability Project Unites individuals and groups from across Chicago to engage in innovative approaches to end violence against women and girls.

Online Toolkits and Multimedia

360 Degrees It is our hope that this site will challenge your perceptions about who is in prison today and why. We also hope that it will generate ideas, big and small, about how we can reduce crime and strengthen our communities without continuing this unprecedented rate of incarceration.
Community Accountability Blog A space to create an online collective knowledge base and resource center for community-based responses to gendered violence. Includes a special issue of Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict & World Order that critically examines grassroots efforts, cultural interventions, and theoretical questions regarding community-based strategies to address gendered violence.
Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence An outgrowth of the Community-Based Interventions Project, a collaborative pilot project to create and promote new alternatives community-based models and educational tools for violence intervention and prevention. The Toolkit contains a basic model for violence intervention, useful information, worksheets, and stories based upon the experiences of Creative Interventions during its development and pilot stages.
INCITE Community Accountability Resources Presents community accountability as an alternative to policing and prisons
StoryTelling and Organizing Project (STOP) Community project collecting and sharing stories about everyday people taking action to end interpersonal violence.
The Community Engagement Continuum: Outreach, Mobilization, Organizing and Accountability to Address Violence against Women in Asian and Pacific Islander Communities Toolkit for community organizing against violence in API communities.
Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance Documents women's experiences in the criminal justice system through stories. The stories are supported by a collection of resources, such as organizations, reports, essays, and links to a wide range of information on women and prison.

Articles

Books

Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology by INCITE Women of Color Against Violence
Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza
Restorative Justice and Violence Against Women by James Ptacek
The Revolution Starts at Home : Confronting Intimate Violence within Activist Communities edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Stories of Transformative Justice by Ruth Morris

Videos

Concrete Steel and Paint When men in a Pennsylvania state prison join with victims of crime to create a mural about healing, their views on punishment, remorse, and forgiveness collide. Finding consensus is not easy – but as the participants move through the creative process, mistrust gives way to surprising moments of human contact and common purpose.
Hollow Water Candid and touching documentary which takes us into the isolated Ojibway village of Hollow Water, located in Northern Manitoba. The community has had a history of violence, suicide, addiction problems and sexual abuse, but the residents of Hollow Water have taken healing into their own hands and launched a profoundly transformative process of restorative justice.
The Interrupters Tells the moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed.
Long Night's Journey into Day As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated the crimes of apartheid, the Commission brought together victims and perpetrators to relive South Africa's brutal history. By revealing the past instead of burying it, the TRC hoped to pave the way to a peaceful future.
A Sentence Apart Follows three stories of people coping with a family member in prison, attempting to bridge broken relationships, and diligently working to reverse the generational cycle of incarceration.
Writ Writer Portrays the historic conflict that emerged in the 1960s when Texas prisoners petitioned the courts for relief from inhumane prison conditions.