Texas Prisons Community Advocates, Inc.

Mission

TPCA's mission is to serve incarcerated individuals, their impacted families, and to empower all through increased awareness and education and collaboration, thereby creating effective advocates who can advance humane conditions within the Texas prison system, known as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ).

The incarcerated and impacted families in Texas face the same challenges found elsewhere in the United States: a prison system the public assumes operates efficiently and humanely in fact fails these individuals routinely on a massive and unconscionable scale. TPCA was created to fight systemic and systematic mistreatment of the incarcerated and impacted family members in Texas by amplifying their voices. Due to the public’s lack of awareness of the inhumane prison conditions and environmental hazards Texas’s incarcerated citizens face today, there has been little impetus for change. We believe that by shining a light on outmoded, false narratives that underlie the public’s misguided acceptance of these conditions, we are making our way to a much-needed paradigm shift.

This shift will improve the entire system for both those incarcerated and impacted families, and in the long run, trigger a reduction in the use of mass incarceration resulting in the closure of many of Texas’s outmoded and unlivable prison facilities. Through research and grassroots mobilization, we hold those in authority accountable to maintain safe and humane standards that promote incarcerated individuals’ well-being within all TDCJ facilities. We hope that our work here can be used as a model for effective change nationwide, one that treats incarcerated individuals and family members with dignity and respect.

Organization Information