Transforming Criminal Justice
Ending mass incarceration while promoting the true safety and well-being of communities
Erin Keith
My path to this work began with direct representation of indigent clients—first advocating for youth accused of delinquency in the District of Columbia, and later for adults navigating Michigan’s criminal legal system and its countless collateral consequences. In this work, I saw how, far too often, poverty, instability, and sheer survival were met with criminalization. I also saw how laws framed as protecting the public were, in fact, outdated, coercive, and misaligned with what safety truly requires, only deepening harm in the process. What struck me was not just the system’s ineffectiveness, but the injustice embedded in its origins, its profound cruelty, and the way it frequently compounds trauma in communities already reeling from systematic disenfranchisement.
My experiences representing clients and advancing systems-change campaigns on excessive fines and fees, money bail, and unconstitutional jail conditions have grounded both my commitment to this work and my understanding of what it will take to end mass incarceration. We must invest in innovation, organizing, and community-driven solutions that balance a comprehensive definition of safety alongside human dignity, while confronting the archaic policies that treat incarceration as the default response to harm.
My perspective is also informed by partnership and ongoing dialogue with people whose lives have been most affected by the system. Their insights keep us accountable and ensure that our strategy and funding philosophy remain grounded in our values.
The Field Today
The United States spends about $445 billion annually on the carceral system and incarcerates people at one of the highest rates in the world. Decades of relying on mass incarceration have made one thing clear: it has never been a viable path towards safer communities. That’s because public safety requires a comprehensive approach that prioritizes human dignity while creating opportunities for accountability, repair, and rehabilitation.
Across the country, advocates, practitioners, and local leaders are advancing a new vision of safety built on a wide range of solutions that reduce harm without relying on mass incarceration—thoughtful strategies that are helping lower carceral populations while also reducing violent crime to historic lows. Together, these efforts show what communities can build when their ideas are adequately resourced.
This progress has been meaningful but remains fragile. Efforts to transform the juvenile and criminal legal system face renewed attacks fueled by fearmongering. A shifting funding landscape threatens the field's stability at a moment when demand for more effective, ethical, and fiscally responsible approaches—and accountability for the system’s disproportionate harms—continues to grow. This critical moment calls for grant-makers to lean in, not step back.
Our Approach
The Navigation Fund’s Transforming Criminal Justice program works to address the past and present harms caused by the criminal and juvenile legal systems while helping to build a future free from reliance on the ineffective, costly, and cruel approach of mass incarceration.
Funding Priorities
Expanding Non-Carceral Solutions: We invest in strategies that increase public safety while offering alternatives to policing, pretrial detention, probation, and prisons. This includes community violence intervention, restorative justice, substance use and harm reduction, and non-police crisis response. We prioritize community-led models that eliminate or significantly reduce contact with the system.
Advancing System Innovation and Accountability: Even as we invest in new public safety solutions, far too many people remain trapped in an outdated, inefficient system that also lacks accountability. We support efforts that advance system innovation to accelerate decarceration. We also value work that equips key practitioners—such as public defenders—with training and exposure to new methodologies. Finally, we champion opportunities to hold the system and its actors accountable, whether through litigation, technological advancements, or other groundbreaking strategies.
Supporting Impactful Change Campaigns: We support community organizing and education, legislative advocacy, and providing direct services as a base-building practice to advance impactful change campaigns. To qualify as impactful, campaigns must remove barriers to improve the quality of life for directly impacted people, shrink the system’s scope and size, or bring unlikely allies into the fight.
Increasing Strategic Communications: Shifting how the public understands safety is essential to achieving lasting decarceration. We support expanding and strengthening journalist training so that reporting on efforts to build safer communities and reduce crime centers human dignity and data rather than sensationalism. We also deploy rapid-response communications to highlight proven non-carceral solutions while investing in the infrastructure needed to sustain long-term narrative change.
Interested in Supporting This Work?
We collaborate with institutional funders and individual donors on pooled funding, co-funding opportunities, and strategic advising.
Grantee Highlights
Silicon Valley De-Bug pioneered Participatory Defense, equipping families to contribute meaningfully to legal defense. What began in one courtroom has become a nationwide network of 50+ hubs that together have prevented over 25,000 years of incarceration.
Illinois Coalition to End Permanent Punishment played a critical role in a statewide campaign that created a pathway to automatic record relief for 2.2 million Illinois residents, potentially removing long-standing barriers to employment, professional licensure, and housing.
Safer Cities provides local government leaders, system stakeholders, and advocates with a concise analysis of effective non-carceral safety strategies. Reaching over 100,000 subscribers in 500 cities, their newsletter highlights research and real-world examples that have informed legislation and sparked innovative pilot programs, inspiring more comprehensive safety approaches nationwide.
Recidiviz builds technology that helps states decrease prison populations, support successful reentry, and strengthen public safety. Its tools have helped more than 240,000 people return home and generated over $1.3 billion in savings across 19 state partners.
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Our Process
We use an invitation-only model, proactively identifying organizations whose work aligns with our priorities. We operate on a rolling, year-long grantmaking structure and prioritize efficiency so organizations can access funding when they need it most.
Here is the Overhead and Indirect Cost Policy for our Transforming Criminal Justice program.