The Sentencing Project, based in Washington, D.C., promotes "more effective and humane" alternatives to prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

 for criminal offenders. It has produced several influential reports on inequalities in the U.S. penal system, including the disenfranchisement of prisoners.

It has also produced articles on the impact of collateral consequences of criminal charges

Collateral consequences of criminal charges

Collateral consequences of criminal conviction, commonly referred to as the "Four C's" are the additional civil state penalties, mandated by statute, that attach to criminal convictions. They are not part of the direct consequences of criminal conviction, such as incarceration, fines, and/or...

 as well, which are effects of a guilty verdict or prosecution that are not included (at least explicitly) in the sentence itself.

Marc Mauer, executive director of the group, has remarked that the U.S. incarceration rate is too high given that "we don't see are the ripple effects of what they mean: For the generation of black children today, there's almost an inevitable aspect of going to prison".