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. Prior to his imprisonment, Charles worked in Public Safety as an Emergency Medical Services Captain and Firefighter. 

Charles is an avid jailhouse lawyer. When Charles became aware of a new MDOC policy whereby Mississippi state prisoners could no longer receive free, secular books from donor book programs, he was instrumental in mobilizing to challenge the practice. 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. 

Charles’ advocacy for people inside includes publishing articles that reveal the tactics used by Mississippi prison facilities for the apparent purpose of evading accountability for policy-violating conduct. In 2016, Charles wrote pieces detailing how MDOC manipulates grievance procedures seemingly to avoid conditions of confinement lawsuits and describing Mississippi’s revival of the practice of “group punishment." He has also litigated cases to challenge prison conditions. 

Charles is a member of PLAN’s legal response team for the southeast region and actively contributes to PLAN teams that challenge conditions of confinement in Mississippi Department of Corrections facilities. He is also a member of the PLAN Advisory Board. Charles assisted with PLAN’s COVID-19 Campaign and is a contributor to Dignity in the Criminal Legal System: A Handbook for Advocacy, Litigation, and Reform (September 2022) that was published jointly by PLAN and Delaware Law School’s Dignity Rights Clinic. This publication is among the JLL’s holdings. He has significant experience and familiarity with the PLAN community and legal advocacy model. Charles also brings to the JLL team extensive direct experience with the legal needs and priorities of incarcerated individuals and the challenges people inside encounter when trying to exhaust remedies and seek judicial relief.