The Coordinating Council of Prisoner Organizations, based in Northern California, was a council of prisoner, ex-prisoner, self-help and other community groups working with prisoners and ex-prisoners to exchange information on existing services and to unite common efforts in dealing with the serious deficiencies in the total system of criminal justice. The primary focus of the council was to reduce the level of inhumanity, injustice, and cruelty in the state prisons and to restore the basic human and civil rights to prisoners and former prisoners of California's penal institutions. The basic guiding principle of the council was that incarceration for short periods of time is punishment enough and any other denial of basic human and constitutional rights is inconsistent with the principles of humanity and justice, and detrimental to the best interests of society. 

This collection contains organizing documents, correspondence, and other materials related to the Coordinating Council of Prisoner Organizations (CCPO) and the Bay Area Prison Coalition. These include materials for a convention in 1972, a conference on the problem of prisons in the 1980s, information connected to proposed legislative reforms, a report calling for an alternative to indeterminate sentencing, efforts to instate a prison construction moratorium, and more. These materials were received as part of a donation from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).