Smart Justice California

Smart Justice California (SJCA) educates and emboldens policymakers who support meaningful criminal justice reforms that promote safety, fairness, and healthy communities. In coordination with our movement partners, we work closely with state and local policymakers to advance common-sense policies that reduce incarceration and over-criminalization while increasing public safety.  

Through policymaker education, advocacy, and grassroots and grasstops activation, we are building the political formidability and electoral accountability necessary to continue enacting state and local reforms. We work to transform the policymaking landscape and bridge the gap between the public’s support for meaningful criminal justice reform and elected officials’ policymaking practices. Since 2018, SJCA has invested more than $25 million backing state and local candidates who support significantly overhauling incarceration and criminalization in California. To shift the public narrative, SJCA also engages policymakers, journalists, philanthropists, influencers and other community leaders through policy briefings and prison visits.  

SJCA is a fiscally sponsored project of Tides Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3), and Tides Advocacy, a non-profit 501(c)(4).