Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons Records #4655, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons through Lao Rubert of the Carolina Justice Policy Center, Durham, N.C., in March 1993 (Acc. 93050).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Capital punishment--Southern States--History--20th century.
• Criminal justice, Administration of--Southern States--History--20th century.
• Jails--Southern States--History--20th century.
• Prison reformers--Southern States--History--20th century.
• Prisoners--Law and legislation--Southern States--History--20th century.
• Prisoners--Legal status, laws, etc.--Southern States--20th century.
• Prisoners--Southern States--History--20th century.
• Prisons--Southern States--History--20th century.
• Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons (U.S.)

The Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons was organized in 1974 with the missions of abolishing the death penalty, stopping prison construction and dependency on incarceration, developing alternatives to incarceration, and protecting the human and civil rights of prisoners. Initially, the Coalition was active in six southern states: North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. By 1977, it was also active in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Kentucky. Over its history, the Coalition operated with as many as ten and as few as four member organizations, among them the Alabama Prison Project, the Clearinghouse on Georgia Prisons and Jails, the Florida Clearinghouse on Criminal Justice, the Kentucky Prisoners' Support Council, the Louisiana Coalition on Jails and Prisons, the North Carolina Prison and Jail Project, the South Carolina Criminal Justice Project, the Southern Prison Ministry, and the Delta Ministry.

Operating with an executive director and central office in Nashville, Tenn., the Coalition produced a quarterly newsletter and sponsored project coordinators in member states. Each project coordinator was charged with identifying persons and groups in his or her state that shared the Coalition's goals and organizing these individuals and groups into local coalitions to develop education programs on prison and criminal justice reform, to identify and prioritize the needs of state and federal prisoners in their locality, to identify and prioritize areas in need of immediate change or reform within the criminal justice and penal systems, and to formulate and implement plans of action aimed at bringing about the necessary changes.

The Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons and its member organizations were financed by contributions from individuals and by grants from various private funding agencies. Some of the constituent organizations have apparently survived the demise in the early 1990s of the Coalition.

Note that folder labels have largely been maintained as received.