How a Top Criminal Justice Group Backs Reform Efforts Across the U.S.

Since its founding roughly five years ago, Civil Rights Corps (CRC) has hit the federal courts fast, hard and frequently to challenge the inhumane and potentially unconstitutional treatment of arrested and incarcerated people. But while it’s most famous for its work in the court system, that work is just part of CRC’s overall goal to “shift power to individuals and communities that are directly impacted by the criminal legal system,” in the words of Development Manager Erica Thurman.

Those efforts include public education through social media, podcasts and a vibrant media outreach program, funneling money and other support to local groups through its newly reorganized re-grant program, and even getting the arts involved. Since 2019, Civil Rights Corps has provided $7,500 yearly stipends to a selected poet-in-residence and visual artist-in-residence to “produce urgent and vivid works that communicate the humanity of our clients and others like them.” The group’s 2021 fellows will be announced later this month.

CRC has also ventured into lawmaking, with a model Pretrial Release and Detention Act, which “sets out a framework for a pretrial system that does not rely on money, that does not rely on algorithmic risk assessment, but that really maximizes pretrial liberty for the folks who are being put through the criminal legal system,” said Director of Policy Thea Sebastian in a Feb. 1 article for Arnold Ventures.

An expanding reach

Civil Rights Corps attorneys have certainly made their mark in state criminal justice systems. By partnering with other national organizations including the ACLU, Black Lives Matter and Advancement Project, and with local organizations including Michigan Liberation, the Texas Jail Project and Life After Release in Maryland, Civil Rights Corps attorneys have fought in court for arrested and incarcerated people across the country—including a recent wave of lawsuits attempting to force municipalities to release jailed and imprisoned people to protect them from the novel coronavirus.

Both before and since the beginning of the pandemic, CRC attorneys have been in court attempting to force reforms across four main areas: cash bail, the criminalization of poverty, taking on prosecutors and other issues within legal systems, and fighting to insure that indigent people accused of crimes receive the defense they're entitled to. Or, as the NFL said in a 2019 release announcing its Social Justice Grants, “Civil Rights Corps are leaders in landmark litigation and high-impact advocacy that empowers communities to change the unjust legal system.”

The organization’s work, and its wins, have attracted significant financial support. From its founding, Civil Rights Corps was supported by funders including the Sandler Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the Open Philanthropy Project. In 2019 alone, CRC received more than $2.3 million in grants, most of which came from the Silicon Valley Foundation.

That support, Thurman told Blue Tent, extends to her organization’s work supporting local partners. Thurman, who took on the task of expanding the re-grant program in August, said, “thankfully, a good number of funders directly support that work. And if they don’t directly financially support it, [they] are really supportive of it.”

Donors also ask Thurman what local organizations should receive their support, which really helps with the “sustainability component” that Civil Rights Corps is trying to help its local partners achieve.

A range of supports

To help build that sustainability, Thurman said that in addition to funds, Civil Rights Corps offers what she calls “more of the technical assistance component,” including providing support with communication, development and operations, with a renewed focus on organizations led by Black, brown, and other directly impacted individuals.

Another spokesperson, Communications Manager Aaron Zeiler, explained that Civil Rights Corps has been re-granting funds since about 2018, but before Thurman came on board to manage the program, “it was very limited and managed on a case-by-case basis.

“Erica really made it into a whole program,” he said, adding that the organization hasn’t yet publicized it beyond their organizational newsletter because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The program does seem to be gearing up. Zeiler told Blue Tent that the fall cycle included $365,000 to organizations including the Texas Jail Project and Life After Release. He added that Civil Rights Corps is getting ready for its 2021 re-grant cycle and that while the program is currently by invitation only, “we are looking forward to opening it to more groups in the future.”

The re-grant program will also facilitate CRC’s work challenging the legal system in court. Just as Michigan Liberation was “instrumental” in making it possible for the Advancement Project and Civil Rights Corps to file suit seeking to release medically vulnerable people from the Oakland County, Michigan jail, Thurman said that by deepening relationships with its local partners through the re-grant program, “we can really have an ear to the community’s needs.”

She says, “That’s part of what we hope comes from these relationships, for us to be informed” about where Civil Rights Corps needs to take up the fight for criminal-justice-impacted people next.