skip to content

Reentry Resource Center - New York

Serving People from Arrest to Reintegration

Advocacy Toolkits Available from the Legal Action Center

  • Organization: Legal Action Center
  • Date Created: Wednesday, December 28, 2005
  • Submitted: Wednesday, December 28, 2005
  • Attachment(s): LINK

Advocacy Toolkits to Combat Legal Barriers Facing Individuals with Criminal Records

People with criminal records face a daunting array of counterproductive, debilitating legal barriers that make it much more difficult for them to succeed in almost every important aspect of life. The Legal Action Center's groundbreaking report, After Prison: Roadblocks to Reentry (http://www.lac.org/lac), documents and grades each state on the legal obstacles that people with criminal records face as they seek to become fully productive members of society. The Report also makes a series of recommendationsfor legislative and policy change that point the way for future advocacy that can make a real difference in facilitating reentry for this population.

In order to help advocates eliminate these unfair roadblocks, the Legal Action Center has developed advocacy kits on 12 critically important policy, funding and legal issues that can be used to remove nearly all of the most harmful roadblocks to re-entry. Each advocacy kit contains some or all of the following:

• Brief explanation of the roadblocks, why they need to be eliminated, and how to eliminate them;

• Model laws and policies;

• Action Alerts;

• Sample advocacy Letters;

• Links to relevant sections of After Prison: Roadblocks to Reentry that provide additional information; and

• We soon will add Sample Editorials that can be used for media outreach.

All parts of each advocacy kit can be downloaded for printing, e-mailing or other dissemination. The Action Alerts, Sample Letters, and Sample Editorials can be shaped to address the specific reforms an advocate is seeking to achieve.