Words From Prison - Organizations of Interest

The Abyssinian Baptist Church
132 Odell Clark Place (formerly 138th St.) New York, NY 10030
Tel: 212-862-7474
www.abyssinian.org/abc/
The Abyssinian Church runs extensive prisoner reentry programs.

Administration of Children's Services: Children of Incarcerated Parents Program
150 William Street 18th Floor, New York, NY 10038
Tel: 1-877-KIDSNYC (543-7692)
www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/home/home.html

The After-School Corporation (TASC)
925 Ninth Avenue New York, NY 10019
Tel: 212-547-6950
www.tascorp.org
TASC helps over 50,000 students each year improve their academic success, gain access to artistic and sports activities, and stay safe during the hours of 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm. TASC provides grants to more than 130 community-based organizations with the goal of ensuring that every child will have access to free, quality after-school programs by 2010.

American Civil Liberties Union: National Prison Project
915 15th Street, NW, 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20005
Tel: 202-393-4930
www.aclu.org/prison/index.html
The ACLU's National Prison Project advocates for criminal justice policy reform and educates the public about the social and fiscal ramifications of our current emphasis on incarceration and the government's deliberate move away from rehabilitation toward debilitating imprisonment.

Center for Community Alternatives
Manhattan and Syracuse
Tel: 315-422-5638 (Syracuse), 212-691-1911 (Manhattan)
www.communityalternatives.org
CCA is a sentencing advocacy program that offers alternatives to incarceration, including New York's first gender specific drug treatment program and New York's only program designed specifically for youth under 16 who are charged as adults.

Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE)
P.O. BOX 2310, National Capitol Station, Washington, DC 20013-2310
Tel: 202-789-2126
www.curenational.org/new/index.html
CURE is a nation-wide grassroots organization dedicated to reducing crime through reform of the criminal justice system by communicating with lawmakers, establishing state chapters with informed memberships, and providing information to the media about justice issues.

Coalition for Women Prisoners
Coordinated by the Women in Prison Project of the Correctional Association of New York
135 E. 15th Street, New York, NY 10003
Tel: 212-254-5700
www.correctionalassociation.org/WIPP/CWP/coalition_main.htm
The Coalition is a statewide alliance of individuals and organizations dedicated to making the criminal justice system more responsive to the needs and rights of women and their families.

The Correctional Association of New York
135 E. 15th St. new York, NY 10003
Tel: 212-473-2807
www.correctionalassociation.org
The Correctional Association is a non-profit criminal justice policy and advocacy organization that works to create a fair, efficient and humane criminal justice system and a more safe and just society.

Drop the Rock
A New York statewide coalition organized by The Correctional Association of New York.
Tel: 212-254-5700
www.droptherock.org
The Drop the Rock campaign is made up of young community activists, veteran criminal justice reformers, artist, students, former inmates, politicians and religious, civic and labor leaders committed to repealing the harsh mandatory prison terms for the sale or possession of relatively small amounts of drugs created by the Rockefeller Drug Laws of 1973.

Exodus Transitional Committee, Inc.
161 East 104th Street, New York, NY 10029
Tel: 917-492-0990
www.etcny.org
ETC seeks to break the cycle of recidivism by providing supportive services to men and woman who are in transition form incarceration to full reintegration into their communities.

Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM)
1612 K St., N.W., Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20006
Tel: 202-822-6700
www.famm.org/index2.htm
FAMM is a national nonprofit organization founded to challenge inflexible and excessive penalties require by mandatory sentencing laws through education of the public and mobilization of a powerful sentencing reform movement.

Fifth Avenue Committee
621 DeGraw Street, Brooklyn, New York 11217
Tel: 718-237-2017
www.fifthave.org
The Committee's Developing Justice program utilizes an evidenced based approach that leverages its job development experience, vocational training, affordable housing and organizing resources in order to provide a comprehensive re-entry approach to criminal justice issues facing our community.

Fortune Society
53 West 23rd Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10010
Tel: 212-691-7554
www.fortunesociety.org
Staffed primarily by former prisoners, The Fortune Society is a not-for-profit community-based organization dedicated to educating the public about prisons, criminal justice issues, and the root causes of crime. It also helps former prisoners and at-risk youth break the cycle of crime and incarceration through a broad range of services.

Girls Employment and Mentoring Services (GEMS)
Tel: 212-926-8089
www.gems-girls.org/services.html
GEMS provides preventive and transitional services to young women, ages 12-21 years, who are at risk of or involved in sexual exploitation and violence. GEMS’s services include counseling, groups, referrals, youth leadership and training.

Greenhope Services for Women, Inc.
East Harlem, NY
Tel: 212-996-8633
www.greenhope.org/index.shtml
Greenhope began as a residential treatment program for formerly incarcerated women and has over the decades developed formal relationships with the criminal justice system and has expanded its work to include services for women on parole and those referred by the courts as an alternative to incarceration.

The Harm Reduction Coaltion
22 West 27th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10001
Tel: 212-213-6376
www.harmreduction.org
The Harm Reduction Coalition (HRC) is committed to reducing drug-related harm among individuals and communities. HRC fosters alternative models to conventional health and human services and drug treatment; challenges traditional client/provider relationships; and provides resources, educational materials, and support to health professionals and drug users in their communities to address drug-related harm.

Hour Children
36-11A 12th Street, Long Island City, New York 11106
Tel: 718-433-4724
www.hourchildren.org
Hour Children provides support for incarcerated mothers and their children. Its programs include prison-based services for pregnant women and mothers such as bringing their children to visit and providing counseling on important decisions regarding family, as well as community-based programs that ease the transition to reunification with their children.

I Have a Dream Foundation
330 Seventh Avenue, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10001
Tel: 212-293-5480
www.ihad.org
The I have a Dream Program motivates and empowers children from low-income communities to reach their education and career goals by providing a long-term program of mentoring, tutoring and enrichment and tuition assistance for higher education.

Justice Works Community
1012 Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Tel: 718-499-6704
www.justiceworks.org
The mission of Justice Works is to educate, organize and mobilize a partnership of concerned citizens and organizations to advocate for just, humane and effective criminal justice policies, emphasizing alternatives to incarceration for women with children.

Learning Leaders
80 Maiden Lane, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10038-4811
Tel: 212-213-3370
www.learningleaders.org
Learning Leaders is New York City's largest nonprofit organization dedicated to serving public school children. Learning Leaders recruits, screens, trains and supports school volunteers who provide instructional support and other enrichment services to New York City public school students.

New York Asian Women's Center
39 Bowery, PMB 375, New York, NY 10002
Tel: 212-732-5230
www.nyawc.org
NYAWC's programs and services include a 24-hour multilingual hotline, Shelter Alternatives: Fostering Empowerment (SAFE), emergency shelter, children's program, community education and outreach, advocacy, and Project Free: Ending Modern-day Slavery.

New York Campaign for Telephone for Justice
A partnership between Fifth Avenue Committee and The Center for Constitutional Rights
Tel: 212-614-6459
www.telephonejustice.org/home.asp
The Campaign is a broad effort to restore justice to prison phone contracts, one that brings the issue to wider public attention, mobilizes opposition, and utilizes all possible avenues to end this practice.

Osborne Association
www.osborneny.org
Osborne Association offers reform and rehabilitation opportunities to individuals who have been in conflict with the law thorough public education, advocacy, and alternatives to incarceration.

Prison Moratorium Project
388 Atlantic Avenue, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Tel: 718-260-8805
www.nomoreprisons.org
The Prison Moratorium Project, composed of activists, community members and formerly incarcerated people, is dedicated to the abolition of prisons. The Project provides workshops and creates videos to educate the public on and build community movements around the realities of the prison-industrial complex and its effects on communities, the “school to prison pipeline,” and alternatives to incarceration.

The Riverside Church of New York
490 Riverside Drive New York, New York 10027
www.theriversidechurchny.org
The Riverside Church runs extensive programs on prison reform and issues surrounding prisoner reentry.

Safe Horizon
2 Lafayette Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10007
Tel: 212-577-7700
www.safehorizon.org
Safe Horizon is the nation's leading victim assistance organization, providing 24-hour lifelines to crime victims, and 80 programs are located throughout the five boroughs of New York City in court houses, police precincts, schools, shelters, and community offices.

Sakhi
New York Metropolitan Area
Tel: 212-714-9153
www.sakhi.com
Sakhi provides a safe place, support, friendship and full-range of culturally sensitive, language-specific services to South Asian women facing abuse in their lives and works to inform, actively engage, and mobilize the South Asian community in the movement to end violence against women forever.

Sanctuary for Families
P.O. Box 1406, Wall Street Station, New York, NY 10268-1406
Tel: 212-349-6009
www.sanctuaryforfamilies.org
Sanctuary for Families provides shelter, clinical and legal services for battered women and their children. Engages in outreach, education and advocacy to end domestic violence.

STEPS to End Family Violence
1968 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10029
Tel: 212-410-4200
STEPS’s mission is to work in partnership with families affected by domestic violence and the criminal justice system. It focuses on prevention of abuse and incarceration, intervention to help people heal from trauma and develop healthy strategies, and policy change through education and advocacy.

Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR)
3325 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 340, Los Angeles, CA 90010
Phone: 213-384-1400
www.spr.org
SPR has three goals: to push for policies that ensure institutional accountability, to change society’s attitudes toward prisoner rape, and to promote access to resources for survivors of sexual assault behind bars.

Women's Advocate Ministry, Inc. (WAM)
3 West 29th Street, Suite 803, New York, NY 10001
Tel: 212-683-3460
www.womensadvocateministry.org
WAM serves women held at The Rose M. Singer Facility for women on Riker's Island in New York City. WAM assists women from the time of their arrest, through the entire legal process, during detention, and after release. WAM educates incarcerated women and acts as a liaison with lawyers and families and referrals for a wide variety of services.

Women's Prison Association
110 Second Ave. New York NY 10003
Tel: 212-674-1163
www.wpaonline.org
Through programs based in jails, prisons and communities, WPA offers an integrated continuum of services to criminal justice-involved women in response to five key areas of need: livelihood, housing, family, health and well-being, and criminal justice compliance.