S.T.A.M.P. was established in 2005 in response to the frequency with which young people are referred to juvenile and adult court systems by schools, parents, service providers, and other community stakeholders. S.T.A.M.P. challenges pollution, criminalization, exploitation, and incarceration by encouraging self-respect, empowerment, leadership, and self-determination among young people, adults, and families most affected by criminal justice and environmental policies which disregard individual needs, erode community assets, and undermine planet security.

We believe that the planet's current ecological and economic crisis is a direct result of criminal justice and environmental policies which promote globalization and massive industrial development over cultural diversity and community-based solutions to social problems. We challenge society's current over-reliance on criminalization and incarceration by connecting 500-year-old issues of prejudice, inequality, oppression, and discrimination with the increased use of policing, supervision, exploitation, and resource extraction nationwide and abroad. We witness the ways in which these life-threatening conditions disproportionately affect communities of color from Indigenous people in the Arctic on the frontlines of global climate change to poor communities fighting neighborhood health hazards caused by big business, to immigrants struggling to survive and students of color in inner-city and rural classrooms being fast-tracked on a school-to-prison pipeline. Understanding that the health of Mother Earth and her inhabitants is linked to the preservation of biodiversity which is directly linked to the preservation of diversity of cultures, lifeways and knowledge systems, we work to empower youth and adults to identify the issues which adversely impact their lives and actively challenge institutional imbalances which threaten their futures and the futures of the Seventh Generation.