Care Not Cages is an independent, grassroots organization made up of residents who are committed to building care for people in our community. $200 million is a once-in-a-generation investment. We can either use the money on solutions such as permanent supportive housing, transportation, and long-term substance use treatment or we can dump more money into a system which has proven it doesn’t work.

Our community has a choice. We can invest millions of dollars into building a new jail or invest in solutions to make jail obsolete.

In 2008, after years of neglect, Monroe County was sued by the ACLU because of poor conditions within the jail. This was the catalyst of the modern fight against carceral expansion here in Monroe County. Decarcerate Monroe County or DMC formed to do the same thing we're doing today, to fight against putting more people in a new facility they will neglect just like the current one. DMC won their fight and disbanded in 201*, but the lessons they learned lived on. In 2022, with the announcement of the current jail push, Care Not Cages was formed by a whole new group of people drawing on the knowledge learned from DMC's fight.