In Our Name was established by Frank Zarro in 2012 as a civic learning and advocacy organization dedicated to bringing public attention to social, economic, procedural, and restorative justice matters and to assisting justice involved people and their families in dealing with the criminal justice process and its aftermath. ION was founded on the premise that if people know how broken our criminal justice system is, they will want to fix it.

Zarro decided to call the organization In Our Name because the truth is that every abuse that takes place in the justice system takes place in the name of each citizen in this country. When a criminal case is tried, the prosecution takes on the mantle of “The People.” Likewise, every legislator and official who determines the fates of the incarcerated acts under the authority of the electorate that put them in power. In a real sense, every time a person is sentenced, every time a cell door slams shut, every time a prisoner is placed in solitary confinement or denied parole, each of us is responsible. In Our Name was founded to engage the people in our communities and acquaint them with this awesome responsibility and empower them to wield their power as citizens for good. As time went on, In Our Name expanded beyond education to engage directly in advocacy work. This work has included helping justice impacted families access legal representation, providing money for low-income people’s basic needs, and helping send the children of incarcerated people to school and summer camp.

In 2015 Frank Zarro helped to create the Skidmore College Project on Restorative Justice and served as the project’s legislative initiatives and civic learning coordinator until it moved to the University of San Diego in 2019.

In recent years, the personnel of In Our Name have begun using innovative social impact funding to develop programs that ease the reentry of formerly incarcerated people into society. In order to separate In Our Name’s pro-bono educational and advocacy work from our consulting and social impact funding initiatives, we have recently formed Society Impact.