Growing Justice is designed to tackle two problems at once: the striking lack of fresh, healthy food in prison and in the lower income communities most incarcerated people come from and return to – problems documented in our 2020 report Eating Behind Bars – and high unemployment rates among formerly incarcerated people.
We’re partnering with the South Carolina Department of Corrections and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to develop indoor (aka vertical) farms on the grounds of two women’s prisons: the Camille Graham Correctional Center in Columbia, South Carolina, and the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, CA. The development and implementation of the farms is supported by three leading advisory firms on controlled environment agriculture — Skout Strategy, AmplifiedAg, and Agr
High unemployment rates among formerly incarcerated people stem from the lack of targeted job training programs in prison and persistent employment discrimination—structural problems that disproportionately impact people of color and perpetuate cycles of inequality and injustice in America.
The pilot prison-based farm is expected to become the first of several indoor farms and allied job training sites in California. Indeed, we have raised funds and are in the process of building a nonprofit indoor farm at our Oakland office, a project we’re also undertaking in partnership with Skout Strategy and AmplifiedAg. It will offer entry-level job training to formerly incarcerated residents of Oakland who did not have access to Growing Justice where they were incarcerated and expand access to fresh food in Oakland with a focus on lower income communities.
To link training with employment in a rapidly expanding industry expected to be valued at $155.6 billion dollars globally by 2026, Growing Justice is partnering with an expanding list of agribusinesses across the United States. Our CEA partners, including Agritecture and Skout, are committed to working with Growing Justice graduates to connect them to job opportunities in the indoor farming sector. We’re also partnering with Honest Jobs and Center for Employment Opportunities to help companies fully welcome and on-board new employees with a history of incarceration.
Our network of partners and supporters is growing. Please contact us if you’d like to join!
Our current partners include:
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