REFORM Alliance’s mission is to dramatically reduce the number of people unjustly under the control of the criminal justice system.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., it had a devastating effect on America’s jail and prisons. Four of the top five COVID hotspots in America were linked to prisons, where government-enforced safety measures (like maintaining safe distance) were simply not viable.

To protect incarcerated Americans, REFORM needed to create a groundswell of support amongst U.S. voters to encourage legislators to adopt SAFER Supervision plans.

To do so, we needed to overcome an entrenched belief: that those behind bars are “the bad guys,” unworthy of empathy even in the face of certain death.

To change hearts and minds, we had to generate empathy toward the 2.3 million humans who are incarcerated and make people aware that COVID-19 threatened to turn a prison sentence into a death sentence.

During the global pandemic, we needed to find a way to get people to care about the 2.3 million humans who were behind bars and make them aware that COVID-19 could turn every sentence into a death sentence. We created a campaign that amplified their voices using their only point of connection with the outside world: a phone call.

We knew that to ultimately reach and compel the most people, we needed emotive content and an obvious reason to engage. So with people spending more time than ever on their phones, we took over feeds with a campaign that connected people directly to those who are incarcerated. Built from real phone calls, a series of social films asked people on the outside to #AnswerTheirCall, giving an often unheard and invisible portion of America’s population a megaphone and allowing the public to gain a deeper understanding of their experiences and fears.

To influence government policy and legislation, REFORM needed to reach voting constituents on both sides of America’s political divide. We had to endear and enlist both Democratic and Republican voters to care about the plight of incarcerated Americans and voice their concern to legislators.

As quarantines enveloped the nation, we knew every American was on their phone, spending more time on social media than ever before. So the question was: how could we harness this behavior to help drive the public’s empathy for people behind bars?

We knew that the one form of communication afforded to the incarcerated was designated telephone access. So our strategy became to use these first-person lifelines to help amplify the voices of those most threatened by COVID-19. While most Americans were safely at home, we could hijack their social feeds and put them in direct contact with those in jail and prison.

In the immediate weeks after the pandemic hit, as people sat in the safety of their own homes, we hijacked their newsfeeds and served them eye-opening phone calls directly from real people in jails and prisons. The series of hard-hitting emotional social films then looked to amplify the message through social media and influencers by prompting people to #AnswerTheirCall. Through sharing the phone calls, they amplified the unheard voices of the incarcerated further. The more they were shared, the louder voices became. And the louder they became, the more celebrities and people of influence began to take notice, and the more pressure was put on governors to take action, forcing legislative changes and early inmate release.

The campaign resulted in powerful storytelling that captivated viewers and drove advocacy.

Our influential partners drove a significant share of potential impressions, supporting us through advocacy in their social feeds—and ultimately sparking a curiosity about REFORM with a millennial audience:

200M Earned Social Impressions

906.8M Press Impressions

This groundswell of attention converted into constituent action:

35% increase of new visitors to REFORM’s website

3.5k social mentions

13.7k total signatures for the SAFER petition

$10M donation from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey

In the end, individual voices within a cell made the whole world care. California’s Governor signed a historic assembly bill that made significant changes to probation in the state, freeing 70,000 people, saving thousands of lives and changing prisoner lives for good.