For 25 years, we have been transforming justice. This year, you’ll meet 25 Changemakers in Action—the thinkers, doers, and connecters—who are working with communities to co-create new approaches to reduce reliance on the legal system and build thriving neighborhoods.

Learn more about our 25th anniversary and meet our Changemakers in Action.

The evidence is clear: studies conducted across the U.S. have repeatedly found that a smaller criminal system will make us safer.

Drug courts face an obligation to rethink some core practices, chiefly the focus on abstinence and the use of jail. Our publication argues the best way for the courts to evolve is to integrate the principles of harm reduction—a person-centered, anti-racist approach to reducing the harms related to drug use. The authors offer 12 strategies to help drug courts re-align with their original mission: a therapeutic, health-based alternative to jail.

Hurt people hurt people. That's not an excuse for harm, but it fuels much of the criminal justice system. At 19, Marlon Peterson was the unarmed lookout on a robbery where two people were killed. Peterson spent a decade behind bars. He writes about those years, and the childhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that preceded them, in his new memoir. I made my own choices, Peterson says, “but I also did not choose to experience the type of things I experienced.”