In 2012, a group of executive directors of state-based criminal justice reform organizations founded the National Network for Justice (NNJ). NNJ is a “big tent” that provides peer-to-peer support for organizations seeking to safely and permanently decarcerate jails and prisons.

An NNJ Interim Executive Committee (IEC) included members from Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, and Oregon. The IEC convened three national meetings in 2012, 2013 and 2014, funded and staffed by Justice Strategies. In 2015, the IEC received a grant from the Ford Foundation to conduct a field survey to determine the need for a peer-to-peer network. The survey, completed in 2016 by Katal Center for Health Equity, and Justice showed there is widespread support for NNJ as a peer-to-peer network, focused on strengthening the field.

The IEC then reconstituted itself as the NNJ Board of Directors. In 2017, NNJ received support from Ford and Public Welfare Foundations to establish the organization, develop its communications, and to provide an annual Boot Camp and Strategies Convening. Safe and Just Michigan (then the Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending) serves as the fiduciary organization until NNJ obtains its 501(c)(3) status.

In 2018, NNJ hired its first full-time staff and began planning for its next stage of development by building a peer network of organizations engaged in efforts to reduce mass incarceration and over-criminalization in the states. The centerpiece of that effort in 2019 will be a gathering of in Tucson, Arizona in July. The future direction of NNJ and how it will pursue its mission, in large part, will be determined by the interactions and relationships formed during that opportunity for mutual learning and sharing of resources among peers organizations from across the country.