The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (EBC) has a three-part mission:
1. to document, expose and challenge human rights abuses in the United States criminal justice system;
2. to build power in communities most harmed by government-sanctioned violence; and
3. to develop and advocate for proactive, community-based solutions to systemic "criminal injustice."
EBC uses a wide variety of tactics to accomplish its mission, including grassroots organizing, direct-action mobilizing, media advocacy, public education, cultural activism, policy reform and legal services.

PARC is committed to exposing and challenging the institutionalized racism of the criminal injustice system and to further developing anti-racism as individuals and throughout our organization. We provide support for educators, activists, prisoners, and prisoners' families. This work includes building networks for action and producing materials that expose human rights violations while fundamentally challenging the rapid expansion of the prison industrial complex.

A network of organizations and communities who seek progressive change in our criminal justice system. The Criminal Justice Reform Network seeks an effective response to over-incarceration, and the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of individuals based on race and class. The CJRN seeks to create a system guided by principles based on the humane treatment of all people and a system committed to racial, social and economic justice.

Prison Legal News is an independent 48-page monthly publication that reports, reviews and analyzes court rulings and news related to prisoner rights and prison issues. PLN has a national (U.S.) focus on both state and federal prison issues, with international coverage as well.

The Center was created in 1976 to respond to the deplorable conditions in prisons and jails in the South and the United States Supreme Court’s decision that year allowing the resumption of capital punishment. Since its creation, the Center has been engaged in litigation, public education, advocacy, and work with other organization and individuals to protect the civil and human rights of people prosecuted in the criminal courts – particularly those facing the death penalty – and confined in the prisons and jails of the South.

Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. We believe that basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really make our communities secure. As such, our work is part of global struggles against inequality and powerlessness. The success of the movement requires that it reflect communities most affected by the PIC. Because we seek to abolish the PIC, we cannot support any work that extends its life or scope.

Prisonsucks.com is a clearinghouse for useful, verifiable statistics about the crime control industry. The site was founded in February 2001 as a private tool to keep track of prison research superior to a stack of news clippings. In December of that year the site was picked up by the Prison Policy Initiative and considerably expanded.

The Justice Policy Institute is a nonprofit research and public policy organization dedicated to ending society's reliance on incarceration and promoting effective and just solutions to social problems. Since 1996, JPI has evolved into one of the nation's most thoughtful and progressive voices for crafting workable solutions to age-old problems plaguing our juvenile and criminal justice systems.

Today, the work of JPI moves along a distinct public policy and programmatic track: We seek to advance the quality and content of public discourse in the ongoing debate around juvenile and criminal justice system reform as well as to help jurisdictions to develop alternatives to incarceration.

The Western Prison Project exists to coordinate a progressive response to the criminal justice system, and to build a grassroots, multi-racial movement that achieves prison reform and reduces the over-reliance on incarceration in the western states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada.

The Defender Association has 92 attorneys representing more than 14,000 clients per year in felony, misdemeanor, juvenile, family advocacy, and civil commitment cases, as well as a number of appeals at all levels of the state courts.

The Defender Association received in 1999 a $146,000 grant from the Justice Department to establish a Racial Disparity Project