Accomplishments

Over more than three decades, EJUSA provided nationally acclaimed training and leadership development, boots-on-the-ground support, and strategic assistance to state and local organizations working to provide healing-centered services to survivors of violence, create trauma-informed approaches to public safety and violence prevention, and to end the death penalty.

Death Penalty

  • Using the groundbreaking work of the Moratorium Now! campaign, which EJUSA launched in 1997, we ended the death penalty in 11 states together with state partners by creating a blueprint on how to move death penalty legislation through a legislature.Major victories included New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Colorado.
  • Strategized with states and hundreds of partners and organized hundreds of thousands of people to stop executions across the country.
  • Trained dozens of organizers and advocates on strategy and communications to strengthen repeal campaigns continuing today in states that still use capital punishment.
  • Built coalitions of family members of murder victims, law enforcement, and other key stakeholders opposed to the death penalty in more than half a dozen states.
  • Generated thousands of media stories about the death penalty’s failures, including features in the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, Fox News, Harper’s Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Caller, and many more.

Community-Based Public Safety

  • We advocated for dozens of pieces of legislation that moved $500 million to create groundbreaking programs that reduced violence in cities and states nationwide.
  • Co-led the New Jersey Violence Intervention and Prevention coalition, which played a crucial role in establishing New Jersey as a leader in community-based public safety as well as securing funding for mental health crisis response programs, known as the Seabrooks-Washington Act.
  • Served in leadership on the California Violence Intervention and Prevention Program that passed crucial pieces of legislation, including the nation’s first firearm and ammunition tax, which sends more than $75 million annually to community safety organizations.
  • In partnership with the Newark community, we documented the community-based public safety ecosystem model in The Future of Public Safety, drawing national attention to the gains in that community.
  • Supported coalitions that successfully expanded health-based violence intervention programs in two states New Jersey and California as well as Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, and Missouri.
  • Grew a statewide organizing base in Louisiana focused on community-based public safety, bringing together frontline activists and organizations to advocate for state- and city-based investments in public safety strategies not rooted in punishment.

Healing Justice

  • Helped secure more than $4 million in federal funding for 12 grassroots community organizations supporting crime survivors in communities of color
  • Increased funding for victims healing services in two states, using funds saved from repealing the death penalty
  • Supported 26 grassroots crime survivor-healing organizations to become stronger and expand their reach
  • Organized a White House roundtable on trauma, race, and violence
  • Hosted a national convening on Trauma for more than 20 grassroots leaders impacted by trauma across the justice system—including crime survivors, formerly incarcerated people, families of the incarcerated, and law enforcement
  • Co-led a groundbreaking, two-year dialogue to find common ground between criminal justice and victim assistance advocates, resulting in the report Bridging the Divide

Trauma to Trust

  • Designed a one-of-its-kind trauma training, From Trauma to Trust: Police Community Collaborative Training
  • Trained more than 1,000 police officers and community members in Newark, New Jersey, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, including more than 20% of the Newark Police Department.
  • Secured law enforcement policy changes in Newark, NJ, that removed barriers for victims seeking compensation and created the police department’s first LGBTQ policy
  • Educated police departments in six cities on trauma and police/community relationships in communities of color

Restorative Justice Project

  • Upon joining EJUSA in 2023, the RJP brought 10 active partners, many of which had been strengthening their communities for years by creating healing and accountability alternatives, especially for youth—and which continue to convene monthly.
  • Continued supporting the expansion of the restorative justice landscape through policy advocacy and research development through leadership with the California and Virginia Restorative Justice Policy Coalitions and the Restorative Justice Research Community.
  • Beginning in 2024, the RJP launched the first Restorative Justice Diversion Roots Cohort, supporting four new organizations, system partners, and their communities, to establish restorative justice diversion programs in the South and the Midwest.

EJUSA Evangelical Network

  • This offshoot from the Death Penalty Program began in 2011 and evolved into a 3,000-person network of hundreds of churches and faith spaces, many of which engaged the Network’s most-used resource – the Church & Justice Tool.
  • Hosted a monthly webinar series called In the Movement for over three years, featuring dozens of guests engaging and elevating the work of restorative justice, violence interruption, death penalty repeal, anti-racism, and more.
  • The Network launched to faith-based coalitions to end the death penalty – one in Alabama and one in Oklahoma – as well as a local group called the Charlottesville Area Justice Coalition.

Conservatives Concerned

  • The nation’s only conservative anti-death penalty group, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty launched in 2013, and grew with local branches in 14 states.
  • Worked with conservative lawmakers to introduce bipartisan anti-death penalty legislation in state houses across the country.
  • Over more than a decade, secured thousands of media placements in a wide array of conservative media outlets.
  • In 2025, the project spun off from EJUSA as Conservatives Concerned to take on broader initiatives and to maximize growth opportunities.

Learning and Practice

  • Developed Getting Grant Ready, a free, self-paced course for individuals and organizations interested in enhancing their grant writing skills.
  • Hosted Peer Learning Labs focused on organizational development, healing, community building, fundraising, and other topics related to building infrastructure.
  • Distributed resource emails to hundreds of grassroots community leaders, providing funding opportunities, trainings, toolkits, and a self care corner.

Research and Evaluation

  • Through A Roadmap for Change, Building Community-Based Public Safety in Bogalusa, documented community-led solutions to public safety and racial justice in Bogalusa, Louisiana, and informing local and national policy conversations.
  • Developed first organizational research strategy, creating a data justice framework to ensure equity-driven, trauma-informed, and participatory evaluation practices.
  • Partnered with grassroots and community-based organizations to produce original research and evaluation tools that center impacted voices, including cost-benefit analysis models comparing community-based public safety to the criminal legal system.