Land Together’s mission is to cultivate justice and belonging by nurturing deep connections to nature, self, and community for people impacted by mass incarceration.
Mass incarceration is an environmental justice issue.
The majority of incarcerated people come from low-income communities of color that have been disproportionately impacted by environmental injustices. Inside prisons, people face daily environmental hazards including overcrowding, water and soil contamination, aging infrastructure, inadequate heating and cooling, and exposure to toxic waste.
The carceral system also weaponizes disconnection, erasing identity, severing ties to nature, and breaking community bonds, often the very same fractures that lead to incarceration. Despite being disproportionately impacted, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people have been systematically excluded from decision-making about the policies and practices that directly affect their lives.
Our solution
Inside prisons, Land Together creates spaces for people to grow — tending land and tending themselves. Access to nature and nutritious food is routinely denied to incarcerated people, even as both remain essential to healing and dignity. Through hands-on food production and deep investment in personal development, leadership, and healing, we build genuine community and cultivate the sense of belonging that incarceration is designed to destroy.
We also know that the systemic inequities and decades of disinvestment that shape people's lives don't disappear with a release date. Our reentry programs walk alongside people after release, providing long-term support, community, and connection to land because healing doesn't stop at the gate.
Through participant-led research, advocacy, and storytelling, we work to shift the policies and culture driving mass incarceration and to advance environmental and food justice for communities that have long been left out of both.
Our Values: What Guides Our Work
All human beings possess intrinsic dignity and humanity.
Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, understanding, and care. We value everyone’s contributions and take time to understand and incorporate diverse perspectives. We foster a culture of kindness, inclusiveness, and safety.
Access to nature is a human right.
We break down access barriers to nature inside and outside of prisons because of the countless physical and psychological benefits of connecting to nature, and because we believe that universal and equitable access to nature is fundamental to our humanity and to the future of life on Earth.
All things are inherently interconnected.
A core problem underlying many of the challenges we face today is disconnection. We nurture connections to self, nature, and community to support personal well-being and the well-being of the world.
There is no justice without restorative justice.
We believe accountability means repair, not punishment. Restorative justice offers a path toward genuine healing for individuals, families, and communities, and a vision for how society can respond to harm in ways that actually end cycles of violence and incarceration.
All humans need to feel like they belong in order to thrive.
In our in-prison and reentry programs, we cultivate community and a sense of belonging by establishing and nurturing connections rooted in trust, interdependence, shared values, and collective goals.
We can go further together than apart.
Through strategic collaboration, prioritizing open and authentic communication, and building caring and supportive communities, we can achieve something bigger than we could alone.
Lived experience is a form of expertise
People who have lived through an experience bring unique insights and understanding that is crucial for designing effective solutions to societal problems. We empower the people we work with to play leadership roles in our programs and advocacy, and we prioritize hiring previously incarcerated and system-impacted individuals.
There is no justice without racial justice.
Racial inequity underpins all forms of systemic injustice in this country, and we are committed to incorporating a racial justice analysis into our programs and systems change efforts.
From who leads our programs to how we tend the land, these values are the roots everything else grows from.
Learn more about how these values show up in our programs: