According to their website, the organization's goals are to “engage, educate and empower" families and individuals affected by crime and punishment, as well as "advance their constitutional, civil and human rights."

“We were founded back in 2012 and we really (brought) families together who have incarcerated loved ones,” Executive Director Lois Pullano said.

Pullano said, in their experience, people are thrown into the system without choice.

"What we found is that often families are walled off," Pullano said. "Not given the very basic information that we need to be able to navigate through this system."

CPR created a resource guide to give the families and loved ones of incarcerated individuals information that will help guide them through this process. 

CPR recently began "Open MI Door," a campaign to end solitary confinement in Michigan. Outside of the Robin Theater, the organization displayed a mock solitary cell. The installation was meant to show the dangerous conditions that those in solitary confinement face. Images of the results of solitary confinement were also presented in a binder inside of the mock cell. 

CPR Community Engagement Specialist Beverly Hynes said the team is working on passing bills that would improve prison conditions.

“(We're working) to give them the programs and support they need so when they are released, they don’t re-offend," Hynes said.

The theatre showcased poetry and art from formerly incarcerated individuals and their family members, which focused on their experiences within the system. 

“The art that I have with me today I brought specifically because it was done while I was incarcerated...,” artist Johnny Van Patten said. “This is kind of new for this art world that we are coming into, that we are focused on prisoner art. We want to lift the stigma on what prisoner art is, because it is limitless.”

Van Patten now works with a motorcycle ministry group that travels around the country and shares the idea that change is possible.

On display alongside Van Patten's art was formerly incarcerated artist Jason Wirick's work. Through his work, he is hoping to share the message that being incarcerated does not have to "weigh you down."

"You can be anything that you want to be," Wirick said. "Just because they tell you you can't do something once you get out of prison doesn’t mean that you can’t. I do artwork and I work a full time job. I have two kids, a wife and I own my own company. And no one thought I would amount to anything when I would get out.”