PLAN Jailhouse Law Library

Jailhouse Law Library

PLAN’s Jailhouse Law Library (“JLL”) breaks the prison system’s stranglehold on legal resources and information for incarcerated individuals. The JLL does so by providing jailhouse lawyers, prison paralegals, and incarcerated pro se litigants actionable legal analysis that may bolster their efforts to challenge and improve their conditions of confinement in United States prisons and jails.

The JLL expands PLAN’s longstanding model of crowd-sourced legal mobilization to drive legal capacity to underserved communities, geographic locations, and issue areas. This initiative also creates opportunities for law students and practitioners who have limited time to contribute to achieve meaningful impact through limited scope pro bono engagements. In so doing, the JLL catalyzes under-utilized legal capacity and broadens the base of legal professionals who are involved and invested in challenging arguably unlawful conditions of confinement.

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JLL Team

The JLL team is comprised of some of the country’s most prominent prisoners’ rights litigators, scholars, and jailhouse lawyers and a nationwide community of pro bono legal volunteers.

The JLL's approach involves a group supervisory model whereby project attorneys and law clerks are guided in their work by a team of attorneys, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers.

Law students and recent graduates may apply to contribute to the JLL by completing the online Law Clerkship application. Attorneys and legal paraprofessionals who would like to serve as pro bono contributors to the JLL should contact the JLL practice.

Stanley Holdorf, Esq.

As President and Supervising Attorney of PLAN, Stanley Holdorf, Esq. has dedicated himself to challenging inhumane conditions of confinement in United States prisons and jails. He also serves on the board of the National Family Court Watch Project. In addition to presenting on PLAN research and casework, Stanley also published and presents nationally on the findings of National Family Court Watch Project’s 15-year study of judicial treatment of (frequently pro se) litigants who allege domestic violence or child abuse in family court proceedings compared to the court’s treatment of litigants who do not.

Supervising Attorney, Prisoners Legal Advocacy Network

Clinical Professor of Law Daniel Manville, Esq.

Daniel Manville is Clinical Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law and Director of MSU’s Civil Rights Clinic. He is a prominent prisoners’ rights litigator. Dan’s seminal texts to aid incarcerated pro se litigants include the Prisoners’ Self-Help Litigation Manual, 4th ed. (co-author John Boston) (Oxford University Press: 2010). The case that granted Dan bar admission – In re Manville, 538 A. 2d 1128 (DC: Court of Appeals, 1988) – set important precedent for other formerly incarcerated people who seek to practice law following their release.

Director, Michigan State University College of Law Civil Rights Clinic

Professor Heather Ann Thompson, Ph.D.

Professor Heather Ann Thompson is University of Michigan Professor of History & Afro-American and African Studies and one of country’s foremost mass incarceration scholars. She won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Pantheon Books, 2016). Heather writes about the history and current crises of mass incarceration for numerous popular and scholarly publications. Her work can be found in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Jacobin, TimeMagazine, The Atlantic, Salon, Huffington Post, and Dissent.

Professor of History & Afro-American and African Studies, University of Michigan

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Mass Incarceration Scholar

Stephen Hampton, Esq.

Stephen Hampton is a prisoners’ rights litigator with Grady & Hampton LLC. He has represented hundreds of prisoners for alleged civil rights violations and other claims such as medical malpractice. Following the 2017 uprising at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center, Steve represented more than 100 incarcerated individuals who reported being beaten and tortured by Vaughn prison officials in the weeks following the February 1, 2017 incident. Steve has served on the governing board of the Delaware Trial Lawyers Association and on the Board of Directors of the Community Legal Aid Society.

Prisoners' Rights Litigator, Grady & Hampton LLC

Askari Danso Lumumba

Askari Danso Lumumba is a Certified Paralegal and jailhouse lawyer who has been incarcerated for approximately 23 years in Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) facilities. As a co-founder of the Prisoner of Conscience and Virginia Prison Justice Network, Askari has successfully advocated for prison reform legislation. He has also litigated a number of civil rights and habeas corpus claims. He contributed to Dignity in the Criminal Legal System: A Handbook for Advocacy, Litigation, and Reform (September 2022).

Prison Paralegal & Jailhouse Lawyer, Virginia

Charles Owens

Charles Douglas Owens is a Certified Paralegal, Certified Advanced Paralegal in Criminal Law and Civil Litigation, and jailhouse lawyer. He has been incarcerated for approximately 18 years in Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) facilities. Working with the free book provider, Big House Books, Charles helped secure legal counsel through the Mississippi Center for Justice and served as a named plaintiff in a federal lawsuit alleging that the policy violated prisoners’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. This lawsuit was dropped when it prompted MDOC to re-write its policy to overturn this prison book ban. He contributed to Dignity in the Criminal Legal System: A Handbook for Advocacy, Litigation, and Reform (September 2022).

Prison Paralegal & Jailhouse Lawyer, Mississippi

Dara Carlin, M.A.

Dara is an independent Domestic Violence Survivor Advocate in Hawaii. She has spent the majority of her career working in non-profit social services agencies. Dara holds a Master’s degree in Marriage & Family Therapy from Hofstra University and is a survivor of child abuse and domestic violence as well as the family court system. Dara is PLAN’s Advocate for Victims of State Sexual and Physical Violence. In this capacity, Dara works to ensure that PLAN’s legal casework is trauma-informed and that JLL holdings are responsive to the needs of the large proportion of incarcerated individuals who experienced interpersonal violence prior to their imprisonment.

Advocate for Victims of State Sexual & Physical Violence

Prisoners Legal Advocacy Network

Jimmy Taylor, Esq.

Jimmy Taylor is Staff Attorney for the New York Legal Assistance Group's (NYLAG) Southern District of New York Pro Se Legal Clinic. Jimmy first joined PLAN in June 2020 as one of nine Fellows assigned to support PLAN’s COVID-19 Campaign in association with the Harvard Law School Systemic Justice Project’s COVID-19 Rapid Response Institute. In addition to his years of sustained contributions to PLAN as a Law Clerk, he also served as an Anti-Displacement Extern with the Community Economic Development Clinic and Urban Justice Center Safety Net Project. Jimmy He continues his work as a member of the Jailhouse Law Library team as a pro bono JLL attorney and member of the JLL Advisory Board.

Staff Attorney, NYLAG Southern District of New York Pro Se Legal Clinic

Nicole Wong, Esq.

A graduate of Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, Nicole Wong first supported PLAN’s Jailhouse Law Library initiative full-time through the New York Court System’s Pro Bono Scholars Program (PBSP). Nicole served on the staff of Hofstra Law Review. Prior to law school, she was a Teach for America educator in underserved communities for two years. Nicole describes her work with PLAN as a tribute to her late father. She vividly recalls from their prison visits his descriptions of the inhumane conditions and fear of physical harm he endured inside. Nicole serves on the Board of Directors of the National Advisory Council On Children’s Legal Representation. She is an Associate at Paul Hastings LLP.

Associate, Paul Hastings LLP

About the Jailhouse Law Library

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What is the purpose of the JLL?

The core purpose of the JLL is to afford individuals in United States adult prisons and jails increased access to legal reference materials and actionable analysis that will help incarcerated complainants better understand: 1) the kinds of relief that may be pursued, 2) applicable procedures and legal standards, and 3) the relative risks and benefits associated with various avenues of relief.

By helping incarcerated pro se litigants sustain their cases beyond sua sponte review under 28 U.S.C. §1915 and the motion to dismiss stage, the JLL may also increase the resources that prison agencies and the state attorneys' offices that represent them must expend to defend against these claims. This may escalate the costs to prisons of sustaining inhumane prison conditions, which may in turn weaken entrenched structures and manifest meaningful change whatever the outcomes of any particular case.

Why are prison law libraries insufficient to meet incarcerated individuals’ legal resource needs?

Currently, most incarcerated individuals’ access to legal information is limited to prison law libraries. The legal resources held in these facilities are often inadequate or restricted to electronic databases that may be difficult for laypeople to navigate. Individuals in segregated housing or other high security units may have only infrequent access to scaled back versions of facility law libraries. In some cases, prisoners may have no direct access to the law library at all, instead being relegated to requesting legal materials by way of prison officers. This practice requires incarcerated individuals to know the case citations for the materials they need without the opportunity to use law library resources to identify such cases. It also requires prisoners to depend on non-legal prison staff to identify and provide legal materials for their use as plaintiffs. In addition to depriving incarcerated individuals of the opportunity to search complete collections of law library holdings, such indirect access also compels prisoners to disclose privileged details of their sensitive legal matters to state officials who may be parties adverse in interest. These officers, or the prison agencies that employ them, may be defendants in the very conditions of confinement cases that prisoners are preparing to litigate. By compelling prisoners to disclose the subject matter of their confidential legal matters to parties adverse in interest, this indirect access to legal information may expose prisoners to retaliation.

In some places, access to prison law libraries remains highly circumscribed in many locations following long periods of closure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Incarcerated individuals in many jurisdictions report that facility law libraries continue to operate reduced opening hours. Prison agencies that have instituted use of computer tablets sometimes make these tablets available only to prisoners who can afford to pay for them. In such cases, indigent individuals often have only restricted access to legal resources at kiosks during limited hours. As the vast majority of incarcerated litigants lack representation of counsel and have no alternative but to represent themselves pro se in civil proceedings, when prison officials deprive prisoners of adequate access to prison law library materials, they effectively deprive people inside of meaningful recourse to contest their conditions of confinement.

How does the JLL differ from other legal guides and resources for people inside?

Legal reference guides for incarcerated individuals who seek to challenge their conditions of confinement are costly and therefore inaccessible to individuals of limited means. Many are infrequently revised to reflect changes in case law. Such texts also tend to focus on filing federal 42 U.S.C. §1983 claims without extensive (or any) treatment of state causes of action or jurisdiction-specific administrative remedies that may be more favorable to prisoners in some situations.

JLL resource materials are available free of charge. They can be searched, printed, and mailed inside by outside advocates or loved ones or requested from PLAN. Because JLL materials are a constellation of limited scope briefs, they can be updated on an ongoing basis.

How does the JLL team decide which conditions of confinement topics and jurisdictions to cover in JLL legal resource guides?

In some cases, the JLL team, supported by a nationwide community of legal volunteers, conducts legal research and analysis at the request of incarcerated individuals. In other cases, legal standards and conditions of confinement issues that are frequently litigated by pro se prisoner plaintiffs in a certain jurisdiction are identified by the JLL team for analysis.

What kinds of materials are included in JLL resources?

Responsive analysis may include legal standards with relevant case opinions, statutes, and/or administrative law. This JLL analysis supplements raw source materials such as case opinions with legal standards that clarify the application of this case law under governing precedent in a given jurisdiction.

JLL analysis may also include information about alternatives to litigation, such as procedures for applying to jurisdiction-specific controlled release programs that may have a higher likelihood of success than motions for compassionate release. JLL analysis also evaluates the potential risks and benefits of seeking relief for certain issue areas in alternate forums or under different legal standards.

For each topic area, legal standard, and jurisdiction covered by the initiative, JLL holdings may include court-filed motions or petitions that have achieved favorable outcomes. These sample pleadings are intended to serve as indicative examples that may help incarcerated pro se litigants advocate for themselves in courts in law. They may also expand the resource materials that are available to inside advocates who provide support to others.

Does the JLL represent incarcerated individuals in legal proceedings or “ghost write” pleadings for individual cases?

No.

Requesting or receiving JLL legal resource materials does not initiate or imply an attorney-client relationship. The JLL does not advise requesters of the legal approach they should pursue or “ghost write” pleadings that address facts specific to a particular case.

However, for each topic area, legal standard, and jurisdiction covered by the initiative, JLL holdings may include court-filed motions or petitions that have achieved favorable outcomes. These sample pleadings are intended to serve as indicative examples that may help incarcerated pro se litigants advocate for themselves in courts in law. They may also expand the resource materials that are available to inside advocates who provide support to others.

In some cases, requests for JLL legal research may bring emergent issues of concern to the attention of PLAN. PLAN may submit widely endorsed statements of concern or otherwise mobilize in response to reported issues, as extra-judicial attorney advocacy may be sufficient to achieve corrective action in some instances. However, PLAN advocacy in such instances does not initiate or imply a representational attorney-client relationship. Such advocacy would be advanced by PLAN’s Dignity Defenders Practice, not the JLL.

How can prisoners access JLL materials?

In addition to sending responsive analysis to person inside who requests legal analysis as to a particular conditions of confinement issue or legal standard, JLL analysis is also uploaded to a searchable online database that serves as a cost-free clearinghouse of legal information. This easily navigable online platform enable prisoners’ loved ones and outside advocates to identify relevant legal information that can be printed and mailed inside. This innovative online resource consolidates legal information that is relevant to incarcerated individuals who are challenging their conditions of confinement and renders it accessible to outside advocates who may be unfamiliar with, or lack access to, costly legal databases.

For prisoners who do not have outside advocates who can provide them materials from this online database, upon written request, PLAN will search for responsive JLL records and mail information to people inside.