Ranked Nonprofits: National Criminal Justice 2011

The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. To date, 273 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 13 years in prison before exoneration and release. The Innocence Project’s full-time staff attorneys and Cardozo clinic students provide direct representation or critical assistance in most of these cases. The Innocence Project’s groundbreaking use of DNA technology to free innocent people has provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Now an independent nonprofit organization closely affiliated with Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the Innocence Project’s mission is nothing less than to free the staggering numbers of innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.

The Sentencing Project is a national organization working for a fair and effective criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing law and practice, and alternatives to incarceration. The Sentencing Project was founded in 1986 to provide defense lawyers with sentencing advocacy training and to reduce the reliance on incarceration. Since that time, The Sentencing Project has become a leader in the effort to bring national attention to disturbing trends and inequities in the criminal justice system with a successful formula that includes the publication of groundbreaking research, aggressive media campaigns and strategic advocacy for policy reform. The Sentencing Project is dedicated to changing the way Americans think about crime and punishment.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is America's premier legal organization fighting for racial justice. Through litigation, advocacy and public education, LDF seeks structural changes to expand democracy, eliminate disparities, and achieve racial justice in a society that fulfills the promise of equality for all Americans. LDF also defends the gains and protections won over the past 70 years of civil rights struggle and works to improve the quality and diversity of judicial and executive appointments.

A nonprofit organization providing legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.

Our mission is to reduce the use of incarceration and the justice system and promote policies that improve the well-being of all people and communities.

The mission of the Campaign for Youth Justice is to end the practice of prosecuting, sentencing and incarcerating youth (under 18) in the adult criminal justice system. CFYJ also seeks to promote research-based, developmentally-appropriate rehabilitative programs and services for youth as an alternative to the adult criminal justice system.

The Council of State Governments Justice Center is a national nonprofit organization that serves policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels from all branches of government. Staff provides practical, nonpartisan advice and consensus-driven strategies—informed by available evidence—to increase public safety and strengthen communities. The Justice Center evolved from the Council of State Governments’ Eastern Regional Conference justice program to a national center in 2006. The center serves all states to promote effective data-driven practices—particularly in areas in which the criminal justice system intersects with other disciplines, such as public health—to provide practical solutions to public safety and cross-systems problems. The Justice Center builds on the solid foundation of work that staff have conducted on the responses to justice-involved people with mental illnesses, crime victims, as well as such issues as prisoner reentry and justice reinvestment—a data-driven approach to reduce corrections spending and reinvest savings in strategies that can decrease crime and strengthen neighborhoods. The Justice Center’s board of directors includes state legislative leaders, judges, corrections administrators, juvenile justice agency directors, and law enforcement professionals; together, they represent a cross-section of the senior-level state officials who shape criminal justice policy.

To protect and improve the lives of youth of color, poor youth and the well-being of their communities by reducing the adverse impacts of public and private youth-serving systems to ensure fairness and equity throughout the juvenile justice system.