FWD.us Education Fund is a charitable organization working to expand freedom and opportunities to tens of millions of people in the United States impacted by the criminal justice and immigration systems. We seek to educate the public about how our harmful criminal justice and immigration systems have held us back and been weaponized in ways that undermine our nation’s promise and democratic ideals.
Our criminal justice system has long failed to make our communities safer or more just. Today, frustrations with this system—including the enormous burdens it places on taxpayers and families and its failure to provide actual safety solutions—are being exploited to justify ineffective strategies like building more prisons. Meanwhile, proven alternatives are too-often ignored.
Rather than doubling down on a system of mass incarceration that has long kept families apart without improving public safety, we can adopt safe and effective reforms that safely lower the jail and prison population, reduce misdemeanor and felony convictions, and create opportunities for the tens of millions of people that have been incarcerated or convicted of a crime.
FWD.us Education Fund develops and distributes research, policy analysis, and storytelling to better define the problems plaguing our criminal justice system and the safe and effective solutions that can expand freedom and opportunity.
Our People First business outreach program also works with HR and business executives to develop best practices for employing people impacted by the incarceration crisis.
Americans have lost faith in our immigration system. Frustration runs deep—driven by border chaos, taking away legal status, labor shortages in key industries, limited legal ways to migrate, and the lack of a pathway to citizenship for people who have raised families, built businesses, and made their lives in America.
Americans want real solutions. Today, a record number believe immigration is a good thing, and the public overwhelmingly supports commonsense reform. It’s time to build an orderly and fair 21st-century immigration system that benefits all Americans. We will all be best served by an immigration system that upholds the best of our values — one built on orderly, safe and humane lawful pathways that allow people to thrive once they come to the US — and that provides immigrants here today rights, dignity and opportunities, centered on a pathway to citizenship.
FWD.us Education Fund focuses on providing research and educating core constituencies around these priorities and working alongside diverse stakeholders across the country and with immigrant communities to create a more fair, just, and humane immigration system.
