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Non-profit

Human Rights Defense Center

Website:

www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/
Location:

Lake Worth, FL
Tax ID:

94-3143411
Tax-Exempt Status:

501(c)(3)

Budget (2017):

Revenue: $1,873,759
Expenses: $1,650,178
Assets: $991,600

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The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) is a left-of-center organization that advocates for prison and criminal justice policy changes. It opposes for-profit prison operations1 and works to expose corporations that use prison labor. 2

Projects of the Human Rights Defense Center include publishing Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, two newsletters that cover and analyze prisoner issues, policing, and criminal law. 3 HRDC distributes these newsletters and other publications to prisoners. HRDC is also active in litigation. The organization specializes in First Amendment cases and files suit against prison officials who use mail policies to censor literature (including its newsletters) mailed to prisoners. It also does litigation targeting other prison policies and files amicus briefs on certain prison-related cases. 4

Founding

Paul Wright is the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center. 5 Wright founded the HRDC in 1990 while serving a 17-year prison sentence for a 1987 armed robbery and first-degree murder of a drug dealer. Wright partially founded HRDC to help publish Prison Legal News, a magazine and newsletter that reports on prison and prisoner rights issues. 6

In a 2016 interview with TakePart, Wright said, “What lands a person in prison has a lot less to do with what they did than their social status and connections.” 7

HRDC hired its first full-time employee in 1996 after receiving a grant from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a controversial watchdog organization. Since its founding, HRDC has expanded its operations to publish literature on criminal justice issues and to peruse prison-conditions litigation. 8

Other current projects of the HRDC include campaigns to oppose for-profit prison operations,9 track the environmental degradation associated with prisons,10 and to end the prison “commission” model for prisoner phone calls. 11

Leadership

Several members of the board of directors of the Human Rights Defense Center previously worked at the National Lawyers Guild, an association of lawyers aligned with left-wing and far-left political interests. These board members include, Michael Avery, a professor emeritus at Suffolk College; Rick Best, a financial management consultant; and Howard Friedman, a Boston-based civil litigation lawyer. 12

Bell Chevigny also serves on the board of the HRDC. Cehvigny is a professor emeritus of literature at Purchase College in New York and has written extensively about prisoner writers and their struggles and accomplishments. Chevigny was a Soros Senior Justice Fellow at the Open Society Foundation and used the organization’s support to publish a prison writing anthology. 13

Prison Legal News (PLN) is the Human Rights Defense Center’s flagship project. PLN is the longest-running independent magazine produced by and for prisoners. All of PLN’s contributing writers are all current or former prisoners. 14

HRDC founder Paul Wright created PLN during his prison sentence to cover prisoners, prisoners’ rights, and news concerning criminal justice-related issues.

In 1995, Wright received a letter from Alex Friedmann, a reader of the PLN newsletter and an inmate at a Tennessee prison who had been sentenced to a total of 10 years for committing armed robbery, assault, and attempted murder in 1987, and aggravated robbery in 1991. 15 Wright and Friedmann became close friends during their time spent incarcerated. Friedmann would go on to write for PLN and later became managing editor of PLN and associate director of HRDC,16  helping to develop the newsletter into a 72-page monthly publication. 17

In 2015, Friedmann was a consultant on criminal justice reform for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. 18 In 2020, Friedmann was charged with two felonies for attempted burglary, evidence tampering, and possession of burglary tools for allegedly breaking into the Downtown Detention Center in Nashville in order to plant tools and weapons. 19

Another major project of the Human Rights Defense Center is Criminal Legal News (CLN), a 48-page monthly publication that focuses on policing and criminal law. CLN was launched in December 2017.

Affiliations with Other Organizations

The Human Rights Defense Center often does work with a variety of other left-leaning organizations. In certain coalition letters of which it is a signatory, HRDC is commonly joined by The Justice Collaborative, a left-of-center litigation group that is a project of the Tides Center, and the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers’ union in the United States and a major policy player in liberal policymaking and Democratic Party politics. 20

Funding

The Human Rights Defense Center is funded in part through left-leaning organizations including the Legal Foundation of Washington and the Sonya Staff Foundation. Other donors included the New World Foundation, a major left-of-center donor organization connected to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Borealis Philanthropy, a philanthropic intermediary known for its partnership with the Black Lives Matter movement; and People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy organization that opposes Christian evangelicalism. 21

References

  1. “How Private Equity Is Turning Public Prisons into Big Profits.” Human Rights Defense Center. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/action/news/2019/pln-managing-editor-quoted-nation-cover-story-prison-privatization/
  2. “From Cop to Killer to Human Rights Defense Center Crusader.” PR Newswire. June 28, 2017. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/from-cop-to-killer-to-human-rights-defense-center-crusader-300480987.html
  3. “Publishing.” Human Rights Defense Center. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/action/publishing/
  4. “Litigation.” Human Rights Defense Center. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/action/litigation/
  5. “Human Rights Defense Center Staff.” Human Rights Defense Center. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/about/staff/
  6. McCray, Rebecca. “Meet Two Former Inmates Dedicating Their Lives to Exposing Injustice.” TakePart. February 11, 2016. Accessed September 7, 2020. http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/02/11/prisoners-for-sale-truth-and-power
  7. McCray, Rebecca. “Meet Two Former Inmates Dedicating Their Lives to Exposing Injustice.” TakePart. February 11, 2016. Accessed September 7, 2020. http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/02/11/prisoners-for-sale-truth-and-power
  8. “About the Human Rights Defense Center.” Human Rights Defense Center. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/about/
  9. “Stop Prison Profiteering.” Nation Inside. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://nationinside.org/campaign/stop-prison-profiteering/
  10. “Prison Ecology Project.” Nation Inside. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://nationinside.org/campaign/prison-ecology/about/
  11. “Welcome to the Prison Phone Justice Website.” Prison Phone Justice. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.prisonphonejustice.org/
  12. “Board of Directors.” Human Rights Defense Center. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/about/board/
  13. “Board of Directors.” Human Rights Defense Center. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/about/board/
  14. “2018 Annual Report.” Human Rights Defense Center. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/media/annualreports/HRDC_2018_Annual_Report_Revised.pdf
  15. Hamilton, Keegan. “An Ex-Con Takes Aim at Multibillion-Dollar Private Prisons.” Vice. March 22, 2014. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kvnny/an-ex-con-takes-aim-at-multibillion-dollar-private-prisons
  16. Hamilton, Keegan. “An Ex-Con Takes Aim at Multibillion-Dollar Private Prisons.” Vice. March 22, 2014. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kvnny/an-ex-con-takes-aim-at-multibillion-dollar-private-prisons
  17. McCray, Rebecca. “Meet Two Former Inmates Dedicating Their Lives to Exposing Injustice.” TakePart. February 11, 2016. Accessed September 7, 2020. http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/02/11/prisoners-for-sale-truth-and-power
  18. Schoffstall, Joe. “Ex-Con Facing Two New Felony Charges Helped Craft Sanders’s Criminal Justice Plan.”The Washington Free Beacon. January 14, 2020. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://freebeacon.com/issues/ex-con-facing-two-new-felony-charges-helped-craft-sanderss-criminal-justice-plan/
  19. Jeltsen, Melissa. “Prison Reform Advocate Accused Of Breaking Into Tennessee Jail.” The Huffington Post. January 7, 2020. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/prison-reform-advocate-accused-of-breaking-into-tennessee-jail_n_5e14afa2c5b6c7b859d159b8
  20. “Letter to National Sheriffs’ Association – COVID-19 phone costs, 2020.” Human Rights Defense Center. April 23, 2020. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/news/publications/letter-national-sheriffs-association-covid-19-phone-costs-2020/
  21. “Funders.” Human Rights Defense Center. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org/about/funders/
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Nonprofit Information

  • Accounting Period: December - November
  • Tax Exemption Received: November 1, 1991

    • Available Filings

    Period Form Type Total revenue Total functional expenses Total assets (EOY) Total liabilities (EOY) Unrelated business income? Total contributions Program service revenue Investment income Comp. of current officers, directors, etc. Form 990
    2017 Dec Form 990 $1,873,759 $1,650,178 $991,600 $53,341 N $503,832 $1,166,269 $0 $0 PDF
    2016 Dec Form 990 $1,136,515 $1,432,245 $789,731 $75,053 N $79,082 $1,031,702 $0 $0
    2015 Dec Form 990 $1,197,859 $1,417,743 $1,117,076 $106,668 N $122,436 $1,037,547 $0 $150,000 PDF
    2014 Dec Form 990 $1,636,386 $1,343,572 $1,357,611 $127,319 N $211,192 $1,418,878 $0 $0 PDF
    2013 Dec Form 990 $1,846,206 $1,164,053 $1,087,983 $150,505 N $1,182,612 $661,248 $0 $0 PDF
    2012 Dec Form 990 $1,077,743 $786,470 $481,692 $227,657 N $167,906 $904,768 $794 $0 PDF
    2011 Dec Form 990 $720,337 $651,159 $245,610 $282,848 N $126,050 $585,027 $19 $62,703 PDF

    Additional Filings (PDFs)

    Human Rights Defense Center

    1028 N FEDERAL HWY
    Lake Worth, FL 33460-2352