Read the Letters Written by Jailhouse Lawyers

Roughly two million people in America are ensnared in a carceral system that is not only isolating and dehumanizing, but also disproportionately harmful to people of color, according to 2022 reporting by the Prison Policy Initiative.

How to navigate this system—and start to reform it—is an important question. But who is best positioned to answer it?

According to the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI)—a project that was founded by formerly incarcerated “jailhouse lawyer” Jhody Polk and is housed at the New York University Law School’s Bernstein Institute for Human Rights—we should favor the wisdom and expertise of those who are most affected by unjust systems, especially those people known as jailhouse lawyers.

The term “jailhouse lawyers” refers to incarcerated individuals who do not generally have formal legal experience, but use resources available to them in prison to learn the law as a means of advocating for their own rights, and for those of their peers.

Despite jailhouse lawyers being uniquely positioned to draw on personal experiences within the carceral system when conducting legal writing, research, and analysis on a range of legal issues, their critical work is often under acknowledged and under resourced. Enter JLI: the organization that supports incarcerated justice advocates and views their contributions as core means of ending the cycle of incarceration. JLI’s areas of focus include building a national network of current and former jailhouse lawyers, while co-developing and providing legal education for people held in prisons and jails.

Additionally, JLI aims to raise the visibility of jailhouse lawyers—and is advancing that work through a novel program called Flashlights, which spotlights the direct perspective of jailhouse lawyers through art, poetry, and letters.

Sukti Dhital, executive director of the Bernstein Institute, says that their collection of testimonies is both powerful and instructive, and that it “calls for the public to listen—to shift their gaze inward into prisons and jails across the country and hear directly from those living through and fighting against injustice.”