NRCAT's founding principles state that: "Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions, in their highest ideals, hold dear.

"[1] NRCAT's mission statement says that the organization "mobilizes people of faith to end torture in U.S. policy, practice, and culture.

[3] In 2008, NRCAT worked urging presidential candidates, Members of Congress, the President-elect and the President himself to issue an executive order halting torture.

NRCAT's efforts proved fruitful when President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order halting torture on January 22, 2009 that adopted many of the coalition's suggestions.

Some incarcerated people have been held for months, years, even decades, in complete isolation and suffer lifelong psychological and cognitive consequences.

[6] As an example of its work, NRCAT drew attention to the summer 2013 hunger strike in California prisons that protested the inhumane conditions, including confinement in long-term isolation.

NRCAT works to end the use of torture abroad by supporting the Leahy Law,[8] a human rights law that restricts U.S. aid to foreign security forces (police, military, and other) that are credibly alleged to have committed gross human rights violations, like torture, rape, and forced disappearances.

Ending anti-Muslim bigotryOn September 7, 2010, NRCAT and the Islamic Society of North America organized an event with 40 national religious leaders who stated that the exponentially growing reality of anti-Muslim bigotry, like the opposition to the building of new Mosques and the threat by the pastor in Florida to burn the Qur’an, was contrary to American values and religious values.