The Initiative partners with a number of community-based and grass roots organizations and advocates across New York City. We strongly believe that our work must be done in collaboration with community-based and grassroots organizations, and those directly impacted by mass incarceration and criminal justice policy. Several community leaders sit on our steering committee and we are continually developing collaborative relationships with community-based organizations. Through our community partnerships we collaborate in the areas of education, research and policy.
Audio Pictures LLC. Audio Pictures LLC. is an Astoria based music/ film production company that provides services in the greater New York City Area. Our Staff has an extensive Music Production experience as well as several years experience working with NYC’s Board of Education.
College and Community Fellowship
The services, programs and projects of CCF exist to eliminate individual and structural barriers to higher education, economic security, long term stability, and civic participation for women who have criminal convictions (including those currently and formerly incarcerated) and their families. CCF guides women seeking to reclaim their lives through the stages of higher education while promoting their leadership, self-advocacy, artistic expression, and long term success. For more information click here.
Citizens Against Recidivism
Citizens Against Recidivism, Inc. works to achieve the restoration of all the rights and attributes of citizenship among people in prison or jail and those who have been released in collaboration with other community and faith based organizations at each of the overlapping phases of the community integration process. For more information click here.
Education from the Inside Out Coalition
The Education from the Inside Out Coalition seeks to remove statutory and practical educational barriers for individuals with criminal justice involvement by educating policymakers and advocating for policy change. We work with federal, state and local government officials, along with educational institutions across the nation, providing technical assistance and other support. For more information click here.
Healing Communities Network
Healing Communities Network is a prison re-entry program for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated that addresses issues of transitional trauma and successful re-integration into the community. For more information click here.
Lyrics from Lockdown
This unbelievably true story begins when Brooklyn’s own hip hop theater innovator and spoken word champion, Bryonn Bain (60 Minutes, The Village Voice, BET’s My Two Cents), is wrongly imprisoned in NYC jails — while studying law at Harvard. Weaving together the voices of over 40 characters into a one-man tour de force, Lyrics From Lockdown, executive produced by Gina and Harry Belafonte, is receiving extraordinary reviews around the world. A groundbreaking multimedia production, this critically acclaimed show uses a live band and video DJ, fusing hip hop, theater, spoken word poetry, rhythm and blues, calypso and classical music, to tell a provocative story exposing racial profiling and wrongful incarceration in a nation imprisoning more people than any other in the world. For more information click here.
New York Prison Education Initiative
Prison Education Initiative was founded in 2004 by friends and colleagues with shared concern for the declining educational resources in prisons and jails. The group identified a lack of volunteer opportunities in academic settings in New York City’s jails. PEI facilitates continuous 8-week units of evening classes through the Rose M Singer Center on Rikers Island in Queens, NY. Past course offerings include: Creative Writing, Architecture, Fashion Theory, Human Rights, GED Math, Literary Magazine, Documentary Film. For more information click here.
The Correctional Association of New York
Founded in 1844, the Correctional Association of New York (the CA) is an independent non-profit organization that advocates for a more humane and effective criminal justice system and a more just and equitable society. For more information click here.
The Osborne Association
The Osborne Association offers opportunities for individuals who have been in conflict with the law to transform their lives through innovative, effective, and replicable programs that serve the community by reducing crime and its human and economic costs. We offer opportunities for reform and rehabilitation through public education, advocacy, and alternatives to incarceration that respect the dignity of people and honor their capacity to change. For more information click here.
Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) Campaign
Our purpose is to promote and witness a process and procedure established whereby elderly people incarcerated in New York State, who have already served considerable time behind walls and are no longer a threat to public safety, are given fair and inclusive release consideration. For more information click here.