Legal Services for Prisoners with Children is active in four basic, often overlapping, arenas.
- Public Policy
- Legal Advocacy
- Grassroots Organizing
- Public Education
In each of these areas we strive to realize our core belief that incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people have the right and the responsibility to speak and be heard in their own voices, transform their lives and communities, and fully participate in all aspects of society.
Public Policy
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children works in partnership with other organizations and grassroots activists to promote change in California’s criminal justice system. We strive in all of our work to amplify the perspectives of people who are directly impacted by the policies in question, including those who are or have been incarcerated and their families. We actively support policies that:
- Stop the construction of new prisons and jails
- Channel funds to community-based solutions to public safety issues
- Improve conditions of confinement
- Reduce the number of people being held in our prisons and jails
- End discrimination against formerly incarcerated people and those with conviction histories
- Create opportunities for formerly incarcerated people to succeed in their communities
In addition to legislative advocacy in Sacramento, LSPC participates in a number of policy task forces and roundtables at the municipal, county and state level. We also provide testimony at policy briefings and hearings and comments to regulators, including those at the Federal level. Most recently we submitted comments to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights regarding the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) new guidance on the use of arrest and conviction records in employment decisions.
Please contact Policy Manager Sabina Crocette, for more information about our policy work.
Phone: 415-625-7040
email: sabina@prisonerswithchildren.org
Legal Advocacy
LSPC engages in impact litigation, as counsel or co-counsel, and occasionally as a plaintiff. Our litigation is usually at the request of, or in collaboration with, California legal services offices. We work to support movements and issues embraced in the communities we serve.
Since 2012, we have been co-counsel on a major federal class action lawsuit challenging prolonged solitary confinement in California prisons. This lawsuit is an outgrown of the historic prisoner hunger strikes of 2011 centered in Pelican Bay State Prison.
In the economic justice area, we have been co-counsel on cases to reform traffic court fines and fees and to restore drivers’ licenses to low income people. This effort is part of a national response to local court injustices that came to light in the aftermath of the Ferguson protests about the police killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.
We have partnered with disability rights organizations by serving as an institutional plaintiff in cases to improve the conditions of people with disabilities who are housed in county jails.
For a detailed description of our cases, click here.
As a general rule, LSPC does not represent individuals in court.
Grassroots Organizing
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children regularly engages in organizing campaigns in collaboration with numerous other organizations, including our CURB Coalition partners throughout the state of California. We bring the perspectives and know-how of formerly incarcerated people to our collaborations primarily through our grassroots membership component, All of Us or None.
Public Education
LSPC and its grassroots component, All of Us or None, collaborates with a wide array of partners to create opportunities for people to come together, share and learn. We organize town hall meetings and public presentations for community members as well as educational events for the service providers and advocacy organizations that serve them.