about us

mission

Community Justice Exchange develops, shares and experiments with tactical interventions, strategic organizing practices, and innovative organizing tools to end all forms of criminalization, incarceration, surveillance, supervision, and detention.  We provide support to community-based organizations across the country that are experimenting with bottom-up interventions that contest the current operation and function of the criminal legal and immigration detention systems. CJE produces tools and resources for organizers to creatively tackle multiple drivers of criminalization and incarceration— including, but not limited to, money bail, court fees and fines, probation and parole, pretrial detention & supervision, and immigration detention & supervision.

vision

Our vision of “community justice” is one of grassroots participation and intervention in the criminal legal and immigration systems to shift power in court proceedings and outcomes. This is not a new vision but one that has long been deployed by communities and organizers, a legacy that informs and guides us.  

Community Justice Exchange is an abolitionist organization. This means that we believe and are working toward a world without prisons, policing, prosecution, surveillance or any form of detention or supervision. We believe in building a world in which everyone has what they need to live well and where we don’t rely on police or prisons to address social problems like houslessness, mental illness, drug addiction, or poverty. We believe we can build a world in which people have the right to migrate and the right to stay. We understand prison abolition, within the framework established by Critical Resistance, as a long-term goal, and a practical organizing strategy. All of the resources we create, as well as the strategic and tactical advice we offer, are anchored in an abolitionist framework.

values

We believe in the self-determination, autonomy, and agency of local communities. As a national organization, we trust and hold ourselves accountable to the pace, capacity, and experience of local organizations building power in their communities and on their terms. While we work with and support a wide variety of grassroots organizations and formations and a diverse range of campaigns to abolish incarceration in multiple forms, our central work is committed to building power in directly-impacted communities through the use of bottom-up organizing tactics.

Community Justice Exchange is committed to learning, growing, and experimentation. We know we cannot dismantle an ever-adapting criminal punishment system without trying new tactics and strategies. We believe that organizers should have the space and freedom to experiment with interventions to bring systemic change to the criminal legal and immigration systems.   

Community Justice Exchange is also the host of the National Bail Fund Network, a formation of over ninety community-led bail and bond funds that are part of campaigns to end pretrial and immigration detention.