The Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI) aims to ensure that jailhouse lawyers have access to effective and relevant training that equips them to meet the diversity of legal needs of incarcerated people. JLI also advocates for leadership, peer support and trauma responsive skills as a part of jailhouse lawyer training. JLI is a national project of the Legal Empowerment Advocacy Hub (LEAH) and is supported by the Bernstein Institute for Human Rights. The legal empowerment of current and former jailhouse lawyers, and law clerks is only half the battle! Families, community organizers, students and legal communities are central to ending the cycle of incarceration and enabling communities to obtain freedom from the inside out.
JLI believes that justice is best achieved through legal empowerment—a process of learning and practice where individuals and communities gain the knowledge and skills to know, use and shape the laws that affect their lives. Through this process, communities can begin to transform the legal system. One model of legal empowerment is that of community paralegals. Community paralegals are not lawyers, but are trained in basic laws and skills and partner with their fellow community members to solve legal problems together. At their best, community paralegals create a bridge between the law and real life. Jailhouse lawyers and law clerks are community paralegals for people who are incarcerated together.
Nearly every person who goes to a jail or a prison comes across a jailhouse lawyer or law clerk. Law clerks are some of the few people who have access to people who are in solitary confinement, on death row, or in the infirmary. Jailhouse lawyers and law clerks are able to reach a large portion of the incarcerated community with the tools necessary for legal empowerment.
Over the next year, in partnership with NLG’s Guild Notes, JLI will be releasing justice toolkits, a series of training resources to support the work of jailhouse lawyers. These toolkits will be aimed at practical skills that will help you better know, use, and shape the law—and share with your peers to be more confident participating in their own case. The legal system in the US needs transformation. It will not happen until we strengthen the power of people.
Our goal is to create resources that are responsive to your needs. Based on communications JLI has received from jailhouse lawyers and law clerks around the country, a range of topics have been identified. Please let us know if you have a special interest in one or more of the toolkits (our mailing address is below). We invite you to share other skills areas you would like to learn more about. Our goal is to issue at least four toolkits in 2021!
Data justice
Most of the data collected about the lives of those incarcerated are collected by the prison systems which hold them. This toolkit will provide skills and training on how jailhouse lawyers can collect, analyze, and use their own data to help advance justice and share stories of truth from the inside.
Narrative storytelling for policy change
Laws and policy dictate aspects of the daily life of those who are incarcerated. Gain skills on how to tell your story of struggle and change in a way that helps the public understand your lived reality, and that can lead to responsive policy changes.
Human rights law
Human rights are rights that exist simply because we’re human beings. The work of law clerks and jailhouse lawyers is protected by Supreme Court cases like Bounds v Smith and Lewis v Casey in the United States but it is also protected by international human rights law.
Legal Research/Legal Writing
Research and writing are the basic tools of any legal advocate. This toolkit will offer tips and strategies to ensure that our research is thorough and our writing effective.
Motivational interviewing
Creating a space of trust and empathy are essential to building strong relationships with those we work with, especially when we’re helping them with their legal needs. Motivational interviewing is a way to guide people through the process of sharing essential information from their case drawing on empathy and shared experiences.
Conflict resolution
People do not leave behind all the difficulties of their life when they come to the law library to work on a case. It is important to have tools to manage emotions and conflict that come up when addressing legal injustices.
Be on the lookout in future issues of Guild Notes for the next toolkit! You can reach JLI at:
Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative
Legal Empowerment and Advocacy Hub
PO BOX 2516
Alachua, FL 32616