Initiatives

Initiative 01 / Prison education

A Classroom in Every Prison

A national campaign to ensure that by 2030, every carceral institution in Canada is partnered with a post-secondary institution.

People who are incarcerated are among the most underrepresented learners in Canadian post-secondary education. A Classroom in Every Prison is the flagship campaign of the Canadian Alliance for Prison Education, a national network working to change that. The premise is simple. Incarceration should not become exclusion from learning.

What the Alliance is

The Canadian Alliance for Prison Education is a national, non-partisan network that connects colleges, universities, educators, community partners, and correctional institutions to expand access to post-secondary education in carceral settings. It works as a coordinating and capacity-building body. It helps institutions launch in-prison programs, guides partnership development with correctional facilities, shares program models and research, builds a national community of practice, and advocates for the policy and funding structures that make access durable. Its vision is prison education that is universal, transformative, trauma-informed, and grounded in equity and Indigenous-led frameworks.

The work already on the ground

This is not a campaign starting from zero. Over the past twelve years, a coalition drawn from ten post-secondary institutions across British Columbia, among them the University of the Fraser Valley, the University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia, Vancouver Island University, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University, has delivered for-credit prison education in more than fourteen institutions across roughly fifty program iterations.

The model is consistent. Communities are consulted in designing a course for a specific institution. Incarcerated and non-incarcerated students learn together in a shared classroom inside the prison. The pedagogy rests on appreciative inquiry, mutual respect, and social justice.

Why education, and why inside

The case rests on evidence, not sentiment. Access to education in prison is associated with reduced recidivism, improved employment outcomes, stronger reintegration, better institutional safety and morale, and lower long-term public costs. Racialized people are heavily overrepresented in Canadian prisons, so the question of who reaches a classroom inside is also a question about how the justice system distributes opportunity and harm. Expanding prison education is a moral commitment. It is also an evidence-based public-policy investment.

The 2030 goal

The campaign sets a clear and ambitious target: by 2030, every carceral institution in Canada partnered with a post-secondary institution. Reaching it requires coordinated effort across provinces and territories, institutional leadership, and a shared commitment to universal access. The work is animated by one conviction. No prison should be beyond the reach of learning.

Initiative 02 / Community protection

Alliance Against Organized Coercion and Targeted Extortion

A community resource and public-safety initiative responding to organized extortion targeting South Asian communities in Canada.

A wave of organized extortion has been targeting South Asian communities in Canada, carried by threats, demands, and violence directed at families and businesses. The Alliance Against Organized Coercion and Targeted Extortion exists to meet that harm directly. It is a community resource hub offering extortion awareness, victim support, and clear reporting pathways, with material available in English, Punjabi, Hindi, French, and many more languages.

What the scale looks like

The pattern is measurable and recent. In Surrey, police recorded 133 extortion files targeting the South Asian community in 2025, up from 12 the year before. The series was effectively dormant in early 2025 and has run at a sustained monthly level since that autumn, peaking at 44 files in January 2026. Two-thirds of files concentrate in a single district, which tells investigators where to look and communities where support is most needed. The figures are police files, not victim counts, and underreporting almost certainly means they undercount the real total.

What the initiative does

The Alliance works on the side of the people being targeted. It sets out what to do when a threat arrives, do not pay or negotiate before speaking with police or victim services, preserve evidence, stop responding, tell someone trusted, and report safely. It provides tailored guidance for families, businesses, international students, temporary foreign workers, and community leaders at gurdwaras, mandirs, mosques, and cultural associations. It names the tactics extortionists use, including the exploitation of cultural values around family honour and shame, because naming what is happening takes some of its power away.

The criminological connection

This initiative is the practical counterpart to a conceptual argument developed elsewhere on this site. What is often charged and reported as ordinary extortion may be better understood as organized criminal persecution, conduct whose aim is not only payment but punishment, fear, and the subjugation of a community. Getting that description right shapes who is treated as the victim and what response the law will authorize. The analysis is set out in When Subversion Masquerades as Extortion.

The Alliance maintains a full resource hub, including immediate-help pathways, prevention guidance, evidence on the Canadian situation, and reporting contacts by province, at stop-extortion.ca. If you or someone you know is being threatened, that site is the place to start. In immediate danger, call 911. In B.C., VictimLink is available 24/7 at 1-800-563-0808.