Faith in Action — Live Free Campaign (2018)

[Criminal Justice Reform] Grant investigator: Chloe Cockburn This page was reviewed but not written by the grant investigator. Faith in Action staff also reviewed this page prior to publication. The Open Philanthropy Project recommended a grant of $800,000 to Faith in Action (formerly PICO National Network) to support the national Live Free Campaign. The campaign intends to continue building organizing power in key jurisdictions with a focus on prosecutorial accountability and reducing gun violence. This is a renewal of our August 2016 grant and falls within our focus area of criminal justice reform. Chloe Cockburn, our Program Officer for Criminal Justice Reform, believes decarceration impacts can be achieved most quickly and tangibly at the local level. Supporting work in many different jurisdictions has the potential to both reduce incarceration and simultaneously build long-term community capacity to alter power dynamics around public safety. In addition to being tractable, Chloe believes local organizing is neglected by funders relative to other approaches to criminal justice reform. However, this model carries significant challenges. Those in the best position to tell us about opportunities to enact local reforms and help us evaluate the efficacy of our support are scattered throughout the country and can be difficult to find and get feedback from. We hope to get better at gathering this information. Despite these challenges, we believe local organizing is an important component of any systems change work, along with the policy change and political change efforts we continue to support.