GiveBig to Living with Conviction by midnight, May 5 and our team of system-impacted navigators will help 15 people on our incarcerated waitlist who cannot afford a lawyer get thousands--or possibly hundreds of thousands--of dollars of court debt waived, without the direct assistance of an attorney. At 12% to 50% interest on restitution, waiting is a crime.
In 2025, our navigators helped their peers get more than $4 million in court debt waived! In 2026, we want to increase that debt relief to $5 million waived and this campaign will contribute to that goal.
This debt, which courts impose disproportionately on people of color, must be paid off before a person can ask the court to clear ("vacate") their conviction. In this way, this policy criminalizes poverty, keeping people shackled to the criminal legal system for life, perpetuating generational cycles of poverty and mass incarceration.
Our Mission: Living with Conviction is a statewide nonprofit that works to secure economic and racial justice with and by marginalized communities, especially formerly incarcerated, through community-driven research, storytelling, and legal empowerment strategies. We aim to disrupt the status quo and claim the power and benefits of the law for our families and communities.
Our Vision: We envision a world where marginalized communities, particularly those with criminal histories, know and freely exercise our rights, regardless of whom we love, the color of our skin, the depths of our pockets, and the worst thing we ever did, in order to enjoy the opportunities that accrue from those rights and realize our full potential.
Organization name
Living With Conviction
Tax id (EIN)
92-0979547
Category
Legal, Social Action & Advocacy
Demographics
Low-Income, Seniors, Black & African American, Indigenous & Native American, Hispanic & Latinx, Asian & Pacific Islander, Veterans, LGBTQ+
Address
PO Box 4021WA, US