Policy & Legislative Priorities
Overview
Federal Level Advocacy
We are helping to shape the national conversation on justice reform, housing, and labor by advancing policy goals across several key departments:
- Housing & Urban Development (HUD) and Health & Human Services (HHS): Championing integrated housing and health care solutions
- Department of Labor (DOL): Advocating for workforce development that expands opportunity for justice-involved individuals.
- Department of Justice (DOJ): Influencing systemic reform and reentry programming.
To establish our community-based model as a national standard, we have engaged in high-level strategy and relationship-building with key decision-makers. Our interests are currently represented through direct engagement with Senators Schiff and Padilla of California, Senators Gallego and Kelly of Arizona, and Representatives Kim, McClintock, and Fong of California.
Amity continues to serve as a subject matter expert for federal government officials. In this role, we help to shape thought leaders’ perspectives on what constitutes an effective justice system, and how federal agencies can work together to drive better outcomes for justice-involved populations and their communities. We have recently delivered critical insights and presentations to the Bureau of Indian Services, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
California State Advocacy
We help shape policy that strengthens non-profit, community service providers and support historically neglected communities. For example, we helped secure legislation that requires CDCR to prioritize partnerships with nonprofits who currently work with and have experience serving currently and formerly incarcerated populations. Amity Foundation also supported a landmark measure updating the Mental Health Services Act, which includes language to prevent discrimination against individuals who rely on medication-assisted treatments for substance use disorders.
State Level Initiatives Supported by Amity:
- Pretrial diversion and sentencing reform including:
- Prop. 36 advocacy
- Expanding diversion programs
- Continuing work with the Jail Closure Implementation Team, helping to ensure just transitions during facility closures like the Men’s Central Jail
- Workforce & employment pathways through building partnerships with trade unions, apprenticeship programs, and social enterprises to ensure justice-impacted individuals can access living-wage jobs
- Supporting directives aimed at youth treatment such as SB 1157 allowing for less-restrictive programs
- Helping to expand pre-release and early reentry
- Increasing CalAIM’s reach, serving 2,270 people in FY25
- Prison service expansion allowing Amity to operate in all 31 state prisons and 2 additional fire camps
- Helping to advance “Jobs Not Jails” approaches
City & County Level Advocacy
From a policy perspective, the most direct and immediate impacts come from local government including city and county levels. Amity has been deeply committed to these levels of our community’s government, including partnerships with the Mayor’s office and operating as a third-party administrator for county-level funding. These efforts have been mutually beneficial as it has allowed small community-based organizations that often get overlooked in government funding opportunities to receive the support they need to continue their vital work at a grassroots level.
City & County Level Initiatives Supported by Amity:
- Third-Party Administrator for JCOD’s CFCI Grants
- Entering the fourth year of this initiative, which was passed by LA County voters in 2020
- Amity Foundation TPA team helped distribute $287.7M in grants for community-based organizations over the course of the first three years
- Continuing advocacy to ensure 10% of locally generated revenue is reinvested into community development and alternatives to incarceration
- Executive Directive 20
- Amity joined Mayor Karen Bass for the signing of the directive, which promotes expanded job opportunities for formerly incarcerated Angelenos
- Enhances enforcement of existing policies like the First Source Hiring Ordinance and Fair Chance Hiring Ordinance
- Uses the City’s hiring and contracting power to connect justice-impacted individuals with quality jobs
What does something different look like when your whole life, this is all you’ve known?
By the time he was 42 and staring down two more decades in prison, Eric Acosta knew all the wrong things, and this question began clawing at the corners of his mind.
Growing up in Reseda, he knew the ugliness of having an absent alcoholic father, living with an abusive grandmother, enduring sexual abuse by the liquor store clerk down the block.