The Grammy, Golden Globe and Academy Award winning singer-songwriter John Legend has teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU to work toward progress for a new goal -- advancing criminal justice reform and ending mass-incarceration in the U.S., as reported in an article by The Daily Beast.

The initiative, which is called Free America, is Legend's latest effort to get more awareness and advance reform on the state and federal level.

According to The Associated Press, after a performance in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, Legend is expected to speak at a press conference with lawmakers in the state in hopes of addressing the issue and seeing what can be done. If nothing else, this will be a good opportunity to get more people informed on the topic.

"We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country," Legend told The Associated Press in an interview. "It's destroying families, it's destroying communities and we're the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration."

After winning his Oscar along with Common for their song "Glory" in the movie "Selma," Legend spoke about mass incarceration in his acceptance speech. The message seemed to resonate with his audience and fans.

He also considered the approval of Proposition 47 in California back in November an early victory for his campaign. Proposition 47 called for treating certain crimes such as shoplifting, forgery, fraud, petty theft and possession of small amounts of drugs a misdemeanor instead of a felony, which can lead to serious consequences when buying a house, getting a job or applying for credit.

"Once you have that tag of a felony on your name, it's hard for you to do anything," Legend said. "Getting those reduced to misdemeanors really impacted a lot of lives and we hope to launch more initiatives like that around the country."

Legend will also be taking his campaign to Washington to co-host a criminal justice event with Politico. Other artists are expected to sign on to his campaign to help raise awareness and advance the cause.