Texas Center for Justice & Equity

About Us:

Our Mission: The Texas Center for Justice and Equity (TCJE) advances solutions and builds coalitions to end mass incarceration and foster safer Texas communities.

Our Vision: In our vision, all Texans live in safe, thriving communities where every person has the opportunity to succeed.

Our Values: TCJE is committed to advancing safe, thriving Texas communities. We believe in collective leadership, and in centering the voices and experiences of system-impacted people in efforts to reimagine justice. We hold ourselves accountable to the communities we serve through our advocacy, and we prioritize members of impacted and marginalized communities in our hiring and on our Board.

The values below lie at the heart of our work. They inform our overarching policy goals and shape our daily interactions with each other and with members of our communities. While each of us are individuals, we are also part of larger, interconnected systems, and it is only through collective empathy that we can achieve genuine safety, healing, justice, and liberation.

Dignity and Potential: We respect and value each person’s inherent worth, abilities, and contributions. Solutions to harm and violence must be rooted in this recognition.

Equity and Fairness: We believe that every person deserves the opportunity to thrive. Each Texan should have access to the individualized resources and supports they need to live a safe, healthy life.

Anti-Racism: We know that only by acknowledging the racist foundation upon which the criminal punishment system was built - as well as how that racism continues to be perpetuated today - can we meaningfully uproot bias, promote intergenerational wellbeing, transform our communities, and prioritize true public health and safety for all Texans.

Inquiry and Transformative Change: We value a persistent eagerness to learn, including from each other’s experiences, which will inspire and inform innovative models, strategies, and practices that most authentically address the needs of people and communities long harmed by systems that inflict trauma and pain.

What We Do:

The Texas Center for Justice and Equity (TCJE) was launched in Austin, Texas, in 2000, following a decade that saw a massive spike in incarceration numbers. While the state’s prison and jail population numbers have since fallen, Texas does remain a leading incarcerator - posing significant, generational harms to families and communities.

TCJE advocates at the State Capitol and in counties throughout Texas to end mass incarceration, shift funding towards community supports, and reduce racial inequities in the criminal punishment system. Our work is guided by the needs of those most impacted by the system, including people of color, people in poverty, and people with substance use disorder, mental health issues, and trauma.

Our advocacy strategy is 3-pronged:

We fight at the Texas Capitol, resulting in thousands fewer people entering the criminal punishment system since 2003, and 220+ bills and budget riders during that time. We rely on our proven tactics: comprehensive research on new safety models; data analysis and the production of reports, articles, fact sheets, and dashboards; strategic coalition-building with local, state, and national groups; narrative work to share sties of system impact; and tailored messaging and education with lawmakers, court and corrections system practitioners, education system practitioners, the larger public, and the media.

We’re on the ground in Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio – Texas’ largest local drivers of people into state incarceration. This work bridges organizing and statewide policy change: effecting change at the county level while creating local support for state-level change. We know the local landscape and key players; we lead and support coalitions; and we educate leadership and local practitioners about needed strategies to effect transformative justice. Among our recent achievements, we built support for the state’s first-ever Youth Justice Community Reinvestment Fund (Houston), created a pilot program to help address disciplined students’ needs through specialized, restorative, in-school supports (Dallas), and helped prevent construction of a women’s jail (Austin).

We build leadership among system-impacted people, centering their voices in our state and local policy development and advocacy work - including through our Texas Women’s Justice Coalition and our Statewide Leadership Council. Members of these system-impacted coalitions, many of whom are trauma and crime survivors, advocate throughout the state and at the Texas Capitol to end mass incarceration, protect people still inside, and help people during reentry. Members represent over 90 Texas cities, allowing for networks of advocates at local and state levels who can mobilize for change. TCJE’s newest campaign and coalition, “Finish the 5,” is a youth-led effort to close Texas’ five remaining child prisons by 2030, to prevent new facility construction, and to reinvest in school- and community- based resources and supports throughout the state, based on jurisdictions’ unique needs. In elevating and amplifying the voices of impacted people, TCJE is creating groundswells of support for bold approaches that promote meaningful stability and wellness, led by people closest to the problem of mass incarceration.

To learn more about the Texas Center for Justice and Equity, our programming, values and impact, visit the links provided below:

• Learn more about TCJE and read a letter from Staff and Board here.
• Learn more about TCJE’s history in our 20th Anniversary Timeline here.
• Review an archive of TCJE’s past policy work here, learn more about our county work here, and find information on our system-impacted coalitions here