Most people familiar with prisoners’ rights issues know attorney Fred Cohen as an advocate for juvenile prisoners and prisoners with mental health issues. They have also seen his byline in the Correctional Law Reporter, which he co-founded more than 20 years ago, and followed his work as a Federal Court ...
Thirty years ago, Brett Dignam would not have believed she would spend her career as an attorney advocating for prisoners’ rights. Dignam’s passion at the time was performance, and she was deeply interested in teaching children’s theater.
“Law school was something I did so that I would have enough credibility ...
In the Shadow of San Quentin: An Interview with Prison Law Office Director Donald Specter
by Todd Matthews
If any one of the dozen attorneys working at the Prison Law Office ever needs to be reminded of the importance of their work, they only need to step outside their office ...
An Interview with Randall Berg, Executive Director of the Florida Justice Institute
by Todd Matthews
With approximately 100,000 people in Florida’s prisons, and another 66,000 in its county jails, Florida has joined the ranks of Texas and California as a state that has taken the practice of mass incarceration to ...
For New York City attorney John Boston, law school was a calling of sorts.
“I went to law school because legal work seemed to be a viable way to mitigate the abuses of oppressive institutions, of which the criminal justice system was and is a prime example,” says Boston, who ...
A Pursuit of Prisoners' Health and Safety: A conversation with Elizabeth Alexander, director of the ACLU's National Prison Project
by Todd Matthews
Thirty-seven years ago, Elizabeth Alexander graduated from Yale Law School and planned to enter the field of welfare law. When her husband was offered a teaching job Madison, ...
Prisoner's Rights Profile: John Midgley
An interview with Washington social justice attorney John Midgley
by Todd Matthews
"The most important thing about prison work is it's fundamentally about human rights," says John Midgley, a Seattle attorney who has worked in the fields of social justice and prisoners rights for three ...
It's difficult to talk about Leonard Schroeter's law career without discussing one topic in particular: civil rights. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1951, Schroeter went to work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), then headed by the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. ...
Wackenhut further angered state officials by saying they must pay for the empty bed space at the Santa Rosa facility caused by transferring prisoners to the Virginia supermax. According to the state's contract, Wackenhut claimed, the state must pay as though the prison is 90 percent full even if it ...
