Bonnie Kerness

Bonnie Kerness has been an anti-racist activist since she was 14, working at the University
Settlement House as a volunteer on issues of housing, and gangs. In 1961, at the age of 19, she
moved to Tennessee to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. In Memphis she was trained
as a community organizer by the NAACP. She continued her work and training at Highlander
Training School in Knoxville, where organizers from throughout the Civil Rights movement met
for training and brainstorming. Bonnie moved back North in 1970 and became active with welfare
rights, tenants rights and anti-war issues.

Bonnie gained her Masters in Social Work and has served as a human rights advocate on behalf
of prisoners since 1975. Bonnie supervised the Family Stabilization Project, a re-entry services
project for the AFSC for over 15 years. She is currently Coordinator of AFSC’s Prison Watch
Project , which has isolation, other forms of no-touch torture and use of devices of torture in US
prisons as a primary focus. She has served as Associate Director and Acting Director of the
AFSC Criminal Justice Program in Newark and the National Coordinator of the Campaign to Stop
Control Unit Prisons. She serves on the Advisory Committee of California Prison Focus, Women
Who Never Give Up, and Solitarywatch.

She has helped publish, “Our Children’s House – testimonies of Youth in Juvenile Detention”;
a play also called “Our Children’s House”; “Torture in US Prisons – Evidence of US Human
Rights Violations; “The Prison Inside the Prison: Control Units, Supermax Prisons and Devices
of Torture”, the Survivor’s Manual (written by and for people living in isolation) and “”Inalienable
Rights – Applying International human rights standards to the US criminal justice system”.”
Bonnie speaks widely on behalf of men, women and children in prison about US human rights
violations of the UN Convention Against Torture. She has been quoted in articles, books and
other publications on prison related subjects.