Publications

Justice Matters is the newsletter of Partnership for Safety and Justice, in publication since 1999. Justice Matters comes out 3-4 times per year. Stories from Justice Matters appear on our site as individual pages, but you can also view the original publications using the links below.

Survivors Speak is the newsletter of Crime Survivors for Community Safety (CSCS), a project launched in late 2004 following the consolidation of Western Prison Project and SAFES (Survivors Advocating for an Effective System). You can read more about CSCS here.

Partnership for Safety and Justice (formerly Western Prison Project) has produced our Prisoner Support Directory since summer of 2000. Originally modeled after a similar directory done by the Prison Activist Resource Center, it is now ten pages of referrals for prisoners in the following areas:

In 2001, the U.S. incarceration rate for adult black men was 7,226 per 100,000; the incarceration rate for adult black men in South Africa, under apartheid in 1993, was 851 per 100,000.

In 2000, the federal government handed down 23,120 sentences for drug violations; almost 4% of our civil labor force either works in a prison or works to put people there.

The Bureau of Prisons expects to have 211,516 people in federal prison in the year 2009; between 1992 and 2000, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized more than $5.5 billion in assets.

In the following pages you will hear the voices of children dealing with the incarceration of a family member. The strength, resilience and determination of these kids are incredible.

This publication came about because of my seven years of working with children dealing with these difficult circumstances. They are not treated as victims of crime, but in many ways they are hurt the most by it. I have witnessed the tears of a child going to visit her mother on mother’s day, only to be coldly turned away because she had metal bobby pins in her hair. I have comforted a young girl who sobbed, not wanting to leave her mommy after a rare visit. I have heard the stories of siblings being separated due to guardianship issues
upon their parent’s incarceration. I have heard statements of loneliness, isolation and despair. Their stories are heartbreaking, sad, funny, honest and sincere. Their scars are deep, but you wouldn’t know it by the smiles on their faces.