My Nonprofit Reviews

If the goal of non-profit organizations is to RAISE AWARENESS of issues the mainline media would prefer to ignore, and be an EFFECTIVE HELP for people who those in mainstream society don't want to know, above all to help our community act out LOVE, NOT FEAR AND HATE - if that is what non-profits are there to do, then Just Detention International is the finest organization I know of. I am a professional criminologist with a particular interest in prisons, sexual assault and mental health, and I am full of admiration for the work JDI does.

I am a Lecturer in Criminology with a particular interest in penal policy. For many years I have been concerned about the issues of rape and sexual abuse in prisons, and distressed by the lack of awareness of and interest shown by many other professionals, the media and the public.

I became aware of the work of JDI (then known as Stop Prison Rape) through a long letter written by David Kaiser and published in the London Review of Books. The letter set out the key issues so succinctly and effectively that I used it as a teaching resource. I also made contact with the organization, and have since become a financial supporter.

In my home country, Australia, we have no equivalent organization to JDI, and as a result we have no equivalent to the Prison Rape Elimination Act, we do not have the network of support groups for prison rape survivors, we do not have reporting mechanisms to even know the rate of sexual assault in our prisons.

By personalizing and sharing the stories of real prisoners, by staying out of (unwinnable) arguments about punitive policies, and instead focusing on our social duty to ensure the basic safety and dignity of those people society incarcerates, JDI has made a positive difference in the lives of countless thousands of the most vulnerable people in the world.

There are many non-profit organizations who do great work in all sorts of fields - from community sports to supporting elite artists -- but my measure of what makes a really great non-profit is that it effectively helps people who no one else wants to know. JDI has no particular religious focus, but as a committed Christian I see its work as exemplifying Christian love in action.

I am proud to support JDI, and I regard them as a model for civic society advocacy and support on this issue.

More Feedback