CZI commits $450 million for criminal justice, immigration reform

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has announced commitments totaling $450 million in support of criminal justice and immigration reform.

To that end, CZI will invest $350 million over five years to launch a new criminal justice reform organization, the Justice Accelerator Fund, focused on criminal justice advocacy efforts that put community health, safety, and healing over punishment; center racial and economic equity; and include those most impacted by the criminal justice system at the heart of the movement for reform. To be led by Ana Zamora, the current director of the Criminal Justice Reform program at CZI, the fund will assume responsibility for CZI's existing criminal justice reform grant relationships.

CZI also announced a three-year, $100 million investment in FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy organization that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan helped launch in 2013 and which over the last few years has worked to protect the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program and end family separation at the border. CZI's current immigration portfolio will be transferred to FWD.us.

"At a time when serious criminal justice reform is happening across the U.S., but when more than 2.3 million Americans remain incarcerated and upwards of a hundred million more live with the burdens of a criminal record, I am both honored and filled with urgency to help lead a new organization that is laser-focused on redesigning our criminal legal system with people, community health and safety, and equity at its core," said Zamora, who previously spent more than a decade leading criminal justice reform advocacy efforts at the American Civil Liberties Union. "Mark and Priscilla's support for this work has been unwavering — and this latest investment to double down and create a more nimble, movement-grounded advocacy organization will help super-charge this work at a pivotal time in our country."

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