Prisoner Support Resources

In addition to our Earth First! Prisoner Support Project and the North American Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network, the following organizations provide critical assistance to comrades behind bars.  Support their work and support the struggle!

American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project: Dedicated to ensuring that our nation’s prisons, jails, juvenile facilities and immigration detention centers comply with the Constitution, federal law, and international human rights principles, and to addressing the crisis of over-incarceration in the U.S.

Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABCF): An excellent resource for political prisoner and prisoner of war support, Denver ABC currently has the most frequently updated general political prisoner website. Los Angeles ABC has the most extensive website. NYC ABC has a calendar to encourage birthday greetings.

Animal Rights Prisoner Support (ARPS): Publishes a regular newsletter, a website and social networking site to publicise the plights of the prisoners, publish their prison addresses and encourage supporters and sympathisers from around the world to write them letters and cards, and let them know they are not forgotten.

Books to Prisoners (BTP): c/o Left Bank Books 92 Pike Street, Box A, Seattle, WA 98101. An organization that sends books to prisoners in the United States. Similar projects exist across the U.S. This is one of the longest standing.

Critical Resistance: “Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.”

The Jericho Movement: PO Box 1272, New York, NY 10013, USA.  Jericho is a movement with the defined goal of gaining recognition of the fact that political prisoners and prisoners of war exist inside of the United States despite the United States’ government’s continued denial … and winning amnesty and freedom for these political prisoners.

National Lawyers Guild (NLG): 132 Nassau Street, RM 922, New York, NY 10038. NLG produces the Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook on how to bring a federal lawsuit to challenge violations of your rights in prison, for $2.00 in stamps, check or money order to “NLG.”

Prison Activist Resource Center:  Publishes annual extensive Prisoner Resource Directory. “We are the first point of contact for people to connect with prisoners’ rights organizations,community organizations, prison literature and arts projects, family and visiting resources, health care and legal resources, parole and pre-release resources, and the prison abolition movement.”

Prison Legal News: The PLN highlights mail censorship, sexual abuse by prison guards and prison overcrowding; often takes on the role of prisoner advocate, going to court against states and private prison operators.

Sylvia Rivera Law Project: Fighting Discrimination against Gender Non-Conforming People, focusing on People of Color and Poor People (including prisoners).

The Transgender, GenderVariant and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP): “The nation’s only organization dedicated to challenging and ending human rights abuses—including rape, discrimination and medical neglect—against transgender, gendervariant/genderqueer and intersex people in prison.”