The Center for Young Women's Development is a nonprofit organization located in San Francisco. The CYWD mission is to provide gender specific, peer based opportunities for high-risk low- and no-income young women to build healthier lives and healthier communities. CYWD works to ensure that young women who have been homeless, incarcerated, involved in the juvenile justice system, or otherwise severely impacted by poverty to be able to achieve self-sufficiency and become positively engaged in their communities.

Established in 1985 as the Western Regional Office of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA), CJCJ maintains a professional staff with diverse backgrounds and expertise in the various components of criminal justice with its senior staff members possessing over fifteen years experience in the justice field. Headquartered in San Francisco, CJCJ provides direct services, technical assistance and policy research in the criminal justice field. The Center includes offices in Oakland, California and The District of Columbia.

The Justice Policy Institute is a nonprofit research and public policy organization dedicated to ending society's reliance on incarceration and promoting effective and just solutions to social problems. Since 1996, JPI has evolved into one of the nation's most thoughtful and progressive voices for crafting workable solutions to age-old problems plaguing our juvenile and criminal justice systems.

Today, the work of JPI moves along a distinct public policy and programmatic track: We seek to advance the quality and content of public discourse in the ongoing debate around juvenile and criminal justice system reform as well as to help jurisdictions to develop alternatives to incarceration.

The Defender Association has 92 attorneys representing more than 14,000 clients per year in felony, misdemeanor, juvenile, family advocacy, and civil commitment cases, as well as a number of appeals at all levels of the state courts.

The Defender Association received in 1999 a $146,000 grant from the Justice Department to establish a Racial Disparity Project