UU Resources
- Criminal Justice and Prison Reform UUA 2005 Statement of Conscience
- Amen to Uprising: A Commitment and Call to Action UUA 2020 Action of Immediate Witness
- UUA Bookstore Offerings
- Dismantle Predatory Medical Care Practices in Prisons and End Prisons for Profit UUA 2018 Action of Immediate Witness
Washington State Legislature
- Senate Law and Justice Committee Members and Staff
- House Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee Members and Staff
- House Community Safety, Justice and Reentry Committee Members and Staff
Partner Organizations
- Washington State Judicial Second Look Coalition. For more information, email alex (at) wavoices (dot) org
Web resources
- The Sentencing Project
- Prison Policy Initiative
- Prison Policy Initiative Washington State Profile
- Alliance for Safety and Justice
- Civil Survival
- American Civil Liberties Union
- Freedom Project Washington
- Collective Justice NW
- Seattle Clemency Project
- Washington Innocence Project
UU Projects and What You Can Do
- Have a criminal justice reform project you’d like help pursuing? Let us know and we will follow up with you.
- We are currently facilitating a Learning Circle reading the book Barred (see under books and publications below). Learning Circles are coordinated through First Unitarian of Portland, OR.
- JUUstice Washington has an application pending for sending books to individuals currently in the WA DOC system. Book may be fiction or nonfiction. As soon as we have final approval, we will publish the process.
- A JUUstice Washington member is trying to get a chess program started at the big WA Correctional Center in Shelton, which is the initial stop for all people sent to the prison in WA state. More details should be available soon. The hope is a weekly meeting for chess with inmates. Chess is a really therapeutic activity that seems to have powerful benefits for reducing re-incarceration risk.
Books and Publications
- Crime Survivors Speak 2022: National Survey on Victims’ Views on Safety and Justice published b the Alliance for Safety and Justice
- Indigenous people in WA incarcerated at higher rates than any other group, data show; reported by Washington State Standard
- Barred: Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison by Daniel S. Medwed
- Prosecution Complex: America’s Race to Convict and its Impact on the Innocent by Daniel S. Medwed
- You Might Go To Prison, Even Though You’re Innocent by Justin Brooks
- Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice by Adam Benforado
- Blind Justice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions by Mark Godsey
- Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable by Joanna Schwartz
- When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment by Mark A.R. Kleiman
- The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts by Stephen B. Bright and James Kwak
Films and Videos
- Since I Been Down is documentary about Washington Department of Corrections inmates and focuses on sentencing and inmate-organized education around the Black Prisoner’s Caucus. While juvenile sentencing age has been increased since the filming, inmate-organized education has taken a step backward due to prison rules.
- 26.2 To Life is a documentary about marathon runners at California’s San Quentin prison. It focuses on inmates serving life sentences and their attempts to find more meaning and redemption.
- This Is What It’s Like to Spend Your Life in Prison | NYT Opinion is a documentary about men serving life sentences with possibility of parole at Louisiana’s Angola prison. It asks the question how much punishment is necessary for justice?