Resources & Ways to Get Involved

Led by people who are directly impacted, EXPO is committed to dismantling all systems that support mass incarceration and excessive supervision. We are dedicated to creating just systems with policies that build healthy families and safe communities.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) exists to recruit, educate, and mobilize citizens in support of the policies and goals of a free society at the local, state, and federal level, helping every American live their dream – especially the least fortunate.

The ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice is working in all 50 states and Washington DC for reforms to usher in a new era of justice in America. Since 2016, Smart Justice  has played a leading role in the passage of more than 450 laws, which have resulted in tens of thousands of fewer people incarcerated.

The Badger Institute has published reports and stories suggesting alternatives that will keep Wisconsin safe but rein in expenditures and help former inmates rejoin society.

Wisconsin Alliance for Youth Justice is for families and advocates of justice involved youth. We support, inform and advocate.

Built on partnerships within Marquette and across Milwaukee, Marquette University’s Center for Urban Research, Teaching and Outreach (CURTO) houses the Educational Preparedness Program (EPP) to provide pathways to higher learning, academic advising and career services for the currently and formerly incarcerated.

Hudson Link was founded in 1998 and is the only 501(c)3 non-profit in the US run by formerly incarcerated individuals to provide college degree-granting programs inside prisons and reentry support to alumni in New York. They work with a number of different NY colleges and reentry organizations.

The first true precision education platform for correctional facilities, employing artificial intelligence and leveraging big data to support incarcerated students.

Provide mentoring and educational counseling to currently & formerly incarcerated men & women so that they may position themselves to start building their career as opposed to obtaining temporary employment.

Our learning platform, UnlockEd, provides comprehensive course management and content access tools to support evidenced based programs, whether self-guided, remote, or in-person, from literacy to university.

In 2018, Slack, The Last Mile, W.K. Kellogg, and FREEAMERICA, co-created Next Chapter, a pilot program designed to shift perceptions about the potential of formerly incarcerated individuals and to generate new opportunities in skilled, long-term employment in the technology sector.

Odyssey Beyond Bars offers college jumpstart programs to students incarcerated in Wisconsin state prisons. We are part of the UW Odyssey Project, which for 19 years has empowered students living in poverty to overcome obstacles, find their voices and reframe their futures.

The Last Mile prepares incarcerated individuals for successful reentry through business and technology training, particularly coding.

To empower professionals to recognize their own leadership and use their voices to mobilize individuals and teams to create the change society needs.

Defy’s entrepreneurial programs enable one of America’s largest forgotten communities to defy the odds. We equip them with new skills, new connections, and a new belief to match their new purpose, and succeed in their new life of economic independence.

Hustle 2.0 reduces crime, violence, and recidivism through evidence-based, trauma-informed programs that equip incarcerated people with the tools to transform their lives by changing their thoughts and behaviors. Our founders’ programs have served 10,000+ people with criminal histories and produced recidivism rates of less than 10% since 2004. H2.0’s comprehensive curriculum combines the voices of people affected by incarceration with the voices of leading correctional rehabilitation authorities.

National Fatherhood Initiative works to increase father involvement by equipping communities and human service organizations with the father-engagement training, programs, and resources they need to be father-inclusive.

In 1980, at the age of 19, Victor Barnett saw many of the young people of Milwaukee being pulled into the street life of gangs, crime, and violence. He used basketball as the tool to engage, mentor and guide youth towards an alternative path that would ensure their future success. From this vision and action, Running Rebels Community Organization was born. Today Running Rebels is a mentoring organization that serves 2,500 youth annually.

The Transitions Clinic Network (TCN) is a national network of medical homes for individuals with chronic health conditions recently released from incarceration. Founded on the idea that the people closest to the problem are also closest to the solution, each clinic that adopts the TCN program employs a community health worker (CHW) with a history of incarceration as part of the clinical team.

An empowerment platform, not another budgeting tool. We’re on a mission to help all Americans build strong financial habits, generational wealth, and alternative credit.

Commissary Club is a free app that connects people with records with one another. Find a job, watch live events, hear music and take a class.

ConConnect provides the justice-impacted community with resources and tools to make a successful Reentry plan and create a pathway towards professional employment or opportunities through networking and building professional connections.

We Adapt is a movement. Established in 2020, our mission was formed in response to worldwide pandemic, racial inequity, and political divide. Adaptation occurs when a challenge presents itself. Our objective is to provide peer support and mentorship to individuals that helps them find the intervention suitable for their lives so that they can reach the most sustainable, healthy, and productive adaptation possible.

The Alma Center works to heal, transform and evolve the unresolved pain of trauma that fuels the continuation of cycles of violence, abuse and dysfunction in families and community. We work primarily with men at-risk or involved in the criminal justice system, with a particular focus on men who have a history of domestic violence.

Our vision is that healing-focused care becomes a leading approach for re-imagining the criminal justice system, particularly in regard to intervention and prevention of family violence, and moves the system toward more restorative and effective models.

Common Justice develops and advances solutions to violence that transform the lives of those harmed and foster racial equity without relying on incarceration.

TransformHarm.org is a resource hub about ending violence. We are not an organization. This site offers an introduction to transformative justice. Created by Mariame Kaba and designed by Lu Design Studio, the site includes selected articles, audio-visual resources, curricula, and more.

You can use what is here, and submit recommendations to be added to the focus areas listed here. We hope you will use these materials to foster your own education and also share them with your communities to build something new. Only together can we transform our relationships to each other and society. We hope that this site helps in this effort.

1) Promoting greater communication and collaboration in reentry/reform/decarceration efforts in Wisconsin.

2) Showcasing the successes, humanity, and agency of people with criminal records.

Kim Malone has seen and heard it all from her personal to professional life.  She will give the view from the side of the fence about the law and the Department Of Corrections, even though she does not always agree on how things are done. Jamie DeJesus will bring the inside prospective of a man who was once a number on the inside and is now learning how to be a better man on the outside of the fence.

Inside Out Creations features designs by formerly incarcerated individuals. Proceeds from the store will help further each organization’s mission to give currently and formerly incarcerated individuals a real second chance that will help reduce our communities recidivism rates.

Project RETURN (Returning Ex-incarcerated people To Urban Realities and Neighborhoods) exists to help men and women make a positive, permanent return to community, family and friends.

The Way Out‘s anti-bias employment platform specializes in matching employers and justice involved job seekers. They also provide a comprehensive list of support services and technologies to help returning citizens succeed upon release.

Hope for Prisoners offers a variety of training programs for its clients to build and strengthen skills necessary for employment readiness, leadership development and success throughout the reintegration process

Partners in Hope is a faith-based prisoner re-entry program, run by Community Warehouse which helps formerly incarcerated prisoners become productive citizens.

Homeboy Industries provides hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people, allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community.

Honest Jobs is the leading national job marketplace for people affected by the criminal justice system. Since launching in 2018, we have attracted nearly 1,000 companies (13 Fortune 500) by providing technology that makes it easy to offer fair-chance employment while helping to mitigate the risk of negligent hiring at scale. We also pride ourselves on the fact that the majority of Honest Jobs employees have felonies and know the challenges first-hand.

Through peaceful demonstrations, civic forums, media programs, personal accounts and political events, we will attempt to educate society about the severe cost and complete beneficial void of maintaining federal, state, county, and municipal registries across this nation.

NARSOL opposes dehumanizing registries and works to eliminate discrimination, banishment, and vigilantism against persons accused or convicted of sexual offenses through the use of impact litigation, public education, legislative advocacy, and media outreach in order to reintegrate and reconcile affected individuals and restore their constitutional rights.

In 1996, Illinois implemented a conviction-based sex offender registry. Legislators have since passed laws restricting housing, employment, education, travel, loitering, and holiday activity, and delineating exclusion zones. They also established new public registries for murder, violent offenses against youth, meth manufacturing, arson, and animal abuse.

WDP is a one-stop shop for the resources and events regarding the reentry, system reform, and decarceration ecosystem in Wisconsin.

Fair Shake is a free, self-serve reentry community development center with more than 15,000 resources and more than 400 reentry guides for food, clothes, housing and medical, education, support for loved ones, and more. Fair Shake offers diverse ideas and information to help you maintain and grow your mental and physical health, even through change. And the entire website is available as a free software application, too, for use in prisons and jails around the US.

We work to strengthen the national movement of justice impacted leaders and allies working collaboratively to correct systemic issues of inequity and injustice within the legal system and beyond.

To provide returning citizens in Baltimore with a central hub of resources and information.

Justice Arts Coalition (JAC) unites teaching artists, arts advocates, artists who are or have been incarcerated and their allies, harnessing the transformative power of the arts to reimagine justice.

Finding Prison Artists is easy by searching our trusted network of top-rated Prison Artists.

The CRC was founded in 2004 serving justice-involved women and human trafficking survivors. CRC supports women as they turn their lives around, through their trademark programs that have been recognized internationally. 

Our mission is to empower women and girls to create sustainable lives post-incarceration. We drive change in the social justice movement by connecting them to housing, food, healthcare, living wage employment, and entrepreneurship opportunities, education, and advocacy that amplifies the voices of those who have been impacted by the criminal legal system.

POW! Partnership of Women is a community of women that seeks to transform lives in the Henderson County area through high-impact and lifelong giving.

The FREE Campaign was founded in 2016 by women who are members of EXPO Wisconsin, when they began to notice the lack of discussion of women’s particular incarceration challenges. FREE has developed networks of directly impacted women from around the state, with particularly strong chapters in Eau Claire and Milwaukee.

Providing Hope, Guidance and Confidence to Incarcerated Women. Preparing the Incarcerated for Re-entry into Society Support Programs for Released Women To Prevent Relapse into Unhealthy Life Choices Mentoring At-Risk Women on Sound Decision Making