Campaigns
CPMP targets all parts of the prison pipeline: the areas in which prisons are built, the areas from which most prisoners are taken, and the state-wide policies which allow this destructive cycle to continue. We seeks to empower and link rural and urban folk alike—those who are forced to live in the shadows of the prison lights, and those whose families are divided by the prison walls. We believe that without drastically reducing the number of people in prison, we cannot make our communities whole, and we cannot achieve real safety.
One of the main focuses of CPMP’s work is the communities where prisons are sited: economically depressed, rural communities in California’s Central Valley. Over half the new prisons built in the past twenty-five years have been dumped in the San Joaquin Valley. From southern Kern County through northern Sacramento County, the Valley is burdened with a harmful, wasteful ‘prison alley.’ See “Why Fight Expansion” for more information on the destruction wreaked by prisons. Click here for a map of prisons in the San Joaquin Valley!
Our Fresno office builds grassroots opposition to prisons throughout the Central Valley, drawing in Central Valley activists who see, for any number of reasons, that a prison will not help their town. We have worked over the past several years to build a Valley-based movement against all aspects of the prison industrial complex, from immigrant detentions, to criminalization of youth, to the environmental justice issues at stake in the Valley’s communities. Currently, the Fresno office coordinates campaigns against the Fresno County Adult Jail proposed expansion, the Fresno Juvenile Detention Center expansion, and mobilizes Valley residents to assist in statewide anti-expansion efforts.
CPMP utilizes strategic advocacy efforts to hit hard on the builder of the prison pipeline: the state of California. Our Oakland office closely watch dogs the state’s budget for prisons, monitors prison legislation and coordinates groups around the state to fight for public investments in education, social and health services, not more cages.
Our Los Angeles office works to slow arrests and convictions in the city and county that sends the greatest number of prisoners into state prisons. We also partner with organizations throughout the Southland to create a unified voice against new jail and prison construction throughout the state. CPMP is a founding member of the “No New Jails Coalition.”
Throughout all our campaigns and all our chapters, CPMP provides research, writing and information on the myths of prison development and the forces driving prison expansion. We provide tools such as our handbook, How To Stop A Prison In Your Town (see Resources), research new areas of prison growth and analyze state legislation on prisons, supplying crucial resources to the people directly impacted by all parts of California’s prison pipeline.
