S. Access to Justice for People in Prison

Interested students should complete the application form for this course here: https://forms.gle/4QdmxGvu5fwt9KRv6. The seminar is for 2 credits, and students will also receive an additional supervised research credit as part of the course.

Inspired by the ongoing reimagination of the Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual (JLM) to make it more accessible and responsive to people directly impacted by incarceration, this course examines the legal, cultural, institutional, and practical dimensions of access to justice during and after incarceration. The course is offered in partnership with the Legal Literacy At Work Fellowship (LLAW). LLAW brings together currently and formerly incarcerated individuals, law students, lawyers, and advocates to collaboratively develop legal resources and projects that empower people in and after prison to understand and assert their rights, advocate for themselves and others, and advance transformative social change. It is co-taught by Tony Windley, the co-director of LLAW.

The course introduces students to the concepts, tools, and practices necessary to support legal rights, empowerment, and agency among system-impacted communities. Particular emphasis will be placed on the use of Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) to identify and address the priorities and lived realities of people seeking access to justice while incarcerated. Students will critically examine the role lawyers can play in expanding access to legal knowledge and strengthening justice-centered advocacy.

The course will feature contributions from attorneys who regularly represent incarcerated individuals, as well as interdisciplinary and system-impacted experts who will help students develop the skills necessary to communicate effectively across differences in identity, educational background, lived experience, and levels of literacy. Topics explored will include legal literacy, trauma-informed lawyering and writing, disability rights, mental health, technology and legal access, navigating correctional bureaucracy, systems change, and the use of legal education and advocacy as tools to reduce mass incarceration.

A central component of the course is collaborative, experiential learning. Students will work directly with individuals who possess extensive expertise in pursuing legal rights while incarcerated, including jailhouse lawyers, formerly incarcerated advocates, and law clerks in prison law libraries. These collaborators will serve as co-educators and essential partners throughout the course. Students will collaborate with LLAW fellows on projects, which could include co-author revisions to chapters of the JLM alongside directly impacted collaborators, making legal resources digitally accessible, or other projects developed in partnership with LLAW fellows that seek to expand access to justice for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and their communities.

Participation in this course is by application and acceptance by the course instructors. Students will be asked to add 1 additional Supervised Research Credit for the project work associated with the course.

If you have any questions about the course, please email Professor Susan Sturm at [email protected].