The Real Cost of Prisons Project (www.realcostofprisons.org)

3 Star Rating ***

The Real Cost of Prisons Project is "dedicated to reducing over-reliance on incarceration." They offer workshops on the topics of the War on Drugs, Incarcerated Women and Children, and the Financing and Siting of Prisons. They create and distribute educational materials about the "costs of incarceration on the individual, his/her family, community and nation." Their website says, "The goals of the Real Cost of Prisons Project are to strengthen and deepen the organizing capacity of grassroots prison/justice activists and to broaden the public's understanding of the economic and social consequences of mass incarceration."

The website is pretty meager, honestly, except for the books/videos and links pages. The books/videos page
( www.realcostofprisons.org/books.html) has links to many excellent resources. And their Links page
( www.realcostofprisons.org/links.html) has links to resources for incarcerated women, activists, the issue of capital punishment, other prison reform/activism organizations and sites, information about the corrections industry, and a list of the websites for all state departments of corrections. Some of the extensive resources listed on this page include:

* The Sentencing Project (www.sentencingproject.org/about.cfm)
* The Justice Police Institute (www.justicepolicy.org/)
* The Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org/homepage.cfm)
* PrisonSucks.com (www.prisonsucks.com/)
* Prison Legal News (www.prisonlegalnews.org/)
* The Prison Activist Resource Center (www.prisonactivist.org/)
* Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers (CLAIM) (www.c-l-a-i-m.org/)
* Critical Resistance (www.criticalresistance.org/)
* Prison Moratorium Project (www.nomoreprisons.org/)
* The Western Prison Project (www.westernprisonproject.org)
* Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons (www.noprisons.org/)
* Postcards from Prison (www.postcardsfromprison.com)

One of the quotes on the realcostofprisons.org site: ""The number of women incarcerated grew by 592% from 12,279 in 1977 to 85,031 in 2001. In 1977, there were 23 men for every woman in state and federal prisons. In 2001 there were 15 men for every woman in prison." - Source: Women's Prison Association and Home, WPA Focus on Women & Justice, August 2003." Another quote from their site: ""By the end of 2001, one in every 37 adults in the U.S. has either done time in a prison or were incarcerated in a state or federal prison. If current incarceration rates hold, 6% of all Americans, 11% of all men, 17% of Hispanic men and 32% of all African American men born in 2001 are likely to end up in prison at some point in their lifetime." - National Resource Center on Prisons and Communities."