In 1999 Partnership for Safety and Justice was founded as the "Western Prison Project," under the fiscal sponsorship of the Western States Center. We worked out of a donated room in the basement of a house, with a start-up contribution of $3,000, a volunteer director (the mother of a Federal prisoner), and the support and encouragement of grassroots activists throughout the region.

We began modestly, by holding house meetings with interested members of the community, and conducting a regional survey to find out who was working on the issue of criminal justice reform at the grassroots level. We talked about the incarceration boom in the U.S. and its human rights implications, heard from people and organizations that had been directly affected, and we asked a question: is there a need for an organization to coordinate and expand grassroots reform efforts in our region? The answer was a resounding yes.

By 2000, our budget had grown to almost $50,000 and we had the resources to begin producing some of the materials and publications we are now well known for. Over the next three years we added new programs and services geared to building a strong movement that could achieve criminal justice reform. We sponsored summits in Washington and Idaho, and stepped up our technical assistance work in Montana, Nevada and Utah.

In our home state of Oregon, we led the formation of the Oregon Criminal Justice Reform Coalition (OCJRC) in 2001 to bring reform voices together to fight for effective public policy changes. Also that year, we launched our “Action Alert Network,” to mobilize members who would write, call and email policymakers and the media to support our initiatives (by fall 2004, the “Action Alert Network” had a membership of over 1,000 individuals throughout the state). In 2003 we expanded our advocacy efforts by adding a part-time staffer to work in Salem and convening our Legal Advisory Committee, which brings volunteer lawyers together with activists to craft reform strategies.

In 2003 and 2004 we launched our first regional campaign through our VOICE Project on voting rights for people with past felony convictions. Over the summer of 2004, the VOICE Project educated over 25,000 ex-felons about their voting rights, and actively registered ex-felons to vote in four states by reaching out to people in jails, drug and alcohol treatment programs, public defenders offices, adult education classes, community corrections, and as they walked out of the prison gates. (The work of the VOICE project merged into our Beyond Barriers program in 2006). In the fall of 2004 we consolidated with our long-term partner Survivors Advocating for an Effective System and launched our Crime Survivors for Community Safety (CSCS) program.

In 2005, Oregon was back in its regular legislative session, and we defeated numerous proposals for harsher sentences and continued to question the explosive growth of the corrections budget in a time of budget crisis. Crime Survivors for Community Safety advanced proposals to better serve survivors of crime. (You can read our Legislative Roundup to learn more about our 2005 work in Salem.) We began some of the research that has become central to our Beyond Barriers program, where we take on barriers to people with past felony convictions. We also continued to send out our well-read newsletter, Justice Matters, and our email and mail Alert lists, which grew to over 1,200 subscribers by the end of the year, and provide support to partner organizations in Washington, Nevada, Utah and Montana.

In 2006 we continued to work with our members on community building, holding events in Portland, Salem and Eugene. Our Alert network continued to grow, and an extensive planning process led us to focus more as a state-based organization and re-organize our work into four distinct programs. In late 2006 we unveiled our new name: Partnership for Safety and Justice.

As we look forward to 2007 and beyond, we will continue to deepen and expand our work for criminal justice reform. It is clear that our work is vitally needed as our state grapples with finding more effective ways to promote true public safety and reduce our costly over-reliance on incarceration.

Our Funders

We are funded by a combination of memberships, donations, and foundations grants. Thanks to the foundations who have supported us over the past several years:

Angelica Foundation
Black United Fund of Oregon
Compton Foundation
Ford Foundation
Funding Exchange
Fund For Nonviolence
Funders Collaborative for Racial Justice
JEHT Foundation
Larsen Legacy
Max and Anna Levison Foundation
McKenzie River Gathering
Ms. Foundation
Norman Foundation
Peace Development Fund
Public Welfare Foundation
Open Society Institute
Ralph L Smith Foundation
Resist!
Social Justice Fund Northwest (formerly A Territory Resource)
Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock