General Legal Aid

The agency provides community action groups that advocate for correctional system reform, provide general legal aid, provide advocacy for human rights for prisoners, and advocate for civil rights for formerly incarcerated men and women and their families in the State of California and nationally.

The agency has several projects, most in Northern California, that address human and civil rights of inmates and former prisoners. The All of Us or None movement seeks to create policy change in public and private hiring practices that discriminate against formerly incarcerated men and women. The Ban the Box campaign to remove the prison record information on applications for employment is one of their important issues.

Other campaigns and programs promote family re-integration, better treatment of pregnant female prisoners, release of elderly prisoners, sentence modification of juveniles, efforts to fight race/class discrimination in the prison system, and educate ex-offenders on their rights. The organization is related to a Los Angeles-based re-entry agency, A New Way of Life; see the separate entry.