In May 1973, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed into law the harshest drug sentencing statutes in the country: mandatory minimums of 15 years to life for low-level drug offenses, with no judicial discretion and no exceptions. The Rockefeller Drug Laws sent hundreds of thousands of people — disproportionately Black and Latino — to prison over the following decades, devastating communities and families while doing nothing to reduce drug use or addiction.

The Legal Action Center (LAC, Norman grantee 1973–1979) was founded that same year to divert people with drug and alcohol problems away from the criminal justice system and toward treatment, a direct counter to the punitive logic driving the new laws. LAC’s multi-pronged approach combined direct legal services, strategic litigation, and policy advocacy, and fought discrimination faced by people with addiction, conviction records, and later HIV/AIDS in employment, housing, and healthcare.

Norman’s support from the very beginning placed it among LAC’s earliest institutional backers. Around the same time, Norman also funded the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Prisoners’ Rights Project (1970), the Citizen’s Inquiry on Parole and Criminal Justice (1974),  the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights’ Mississippi Prisoners’ Defense Committee (1973–1976), and the Central Mississippi Legal Services Mental Health Project (1976–1979), reflecting an understanding, well ahead of mainstream philanthropy, that the criminal justice system was itself a site of civil rights violations demanding urgent attention.