Oct. 17-19, 2024

This session will bring together advocates pushing for an end to unpaid labor, punitive labor practices, and other labor issues affecting incarcerated people in prison and jails. Labor practices in southern prisons—and the challenges brought against them—will be particularly instructive during this conversation. Panelists will discuss litigation challenging forced labor in a variety of contexts, including penal plantations in Louisiana; immigration detention by GEO in California; private corporations and the state in Alabama; and work-release in and for Baltimore County. Attendees will strategize about how best to attack forced, unpaid labor in their states.

A disability approach to decarceration understands that jails and prisons exist on a spectrum of carcerality that includes other forms of institutionalization, and that the creation of community care services is a necessary component of reducing reliance on incarceration and institutionalization. Cases challenging long waiting lists for admission to state psychiatric hospitals for competency evaluation and restoration have succeeded in decarcerating people with mental health disabilities from jails in part through establishing community-based evaluation and restoration systems, with wraparound services including housing. Achieving these settlements requires the involvement of agencies outside of jails themselves, including state departments of health and human services and housing, prosecutors and courts. They also require an understanding of the pressures on bed space at state hospitals created by civil commitment and other failures of community care. This panel features litigators from some of the major settlements in this area of law from Washington, Oregon and Colorado, who will unpack what community services the settlements have produced and the impact of these on the incarceration of people with serious mental illness, and what sustained enforcement has required from courts, legislatures, and service providers. 

Since 1996, the Prison Litigation Reform Act has made civil rights cases for people behind bars harder to bring and harder to win.  But there are strategies to manage the PLRA.  Panelists will discuss both accepted workarounds and potential new avenues to push back. 

With increasing hostility to civil rights claims at the federal level, advocates must devise new strategies and venues for addressing human rights abuses on the inside outside of the federal courthouse.  Panelists with extensive experience researching and litigating state court challenges will provide insights on how to use state courts to advance justice for your clients.

The segment of incarcerated people aged 55 and older is one of the fastest growing groups in prisons across the country, and the costs of incarcerating the sick and elderly is high. But what does it really mean when we talk about the “greying” of the US prison population, and what is it actually like to grow old behind bars? What options do legal advocates, system-impacted people, medical professionals, and organizers have to help? At both the state and federal levels, there are legal processes that allow eligible people to be considered for early release on medical, geriatric, and humanitarian grounds. But do these processes currently live up to their promise? How can we bolster and expand compassionate release processes, so they meaningfully shrink our currently bloated system?

This facilitated conversation aims to create a space for open dialogue, mutual learning, and to gain a collective understanding among activists, lawyers, and advocates about the ways solitary confinement is used to oppress organizing efforts in prison, as well as disparities in the use of solitary confinement that disproportionately affect people of color, LGBTQI+ people, and people with disabilities. The session will also address legislative, political, and legal efforts to end solitary confinement, including the use of international human rights law in domestic advocacy.

This panel explores how we can advocate not just for, but with incarcerated members of the LGBTQ+ community. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from advocates who approach this work from various angles, including: Jack Einstein, ARC Gender Justice, a senior paralegal who helps lead ARC’s gender justice work across prison walls. Dee Farmer, an expert, legal consultant, and nationally-recognized civil rights advocate directly impacted by the carceral system whose lawsuit, Farmer v. Brennan, marked the first time SCOTUS heard a case involving a plaintiff who disclosed they were transgender. A.D. Lewis, People’s Law Office, a movement lawyer who routinely advocates for trans rights in federal courts around the country while engaging in non-litigation advocacy to amplify and expand their impact. And Richard Saenz, Lambda Legal, an experienced trial attorney who has received national recognition for his work on behalf of LGBTQ+ people and those living with HIV, and who is the project manager and co-author of Protected and Served? 2022, Lambda Legal’s groundbreaking community survey on the experiences of LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV with the criminal legal system.

This panel presents an opportunity for robust discussion about creative ways we can advocate for incarcerated people outside of litigation. We hope this panel discussion inspires attendees to think creatively about advocacy strategies, and to work collaboratively with non-lawyers toward liberation. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from advocates who have employed creative non-litigation strategies around the country, including: Margot Mendelson, Prison Law Office, who partners with California’s Protection & Advocacy Agency to eliminate torturous solitary conditions in county jails without the need for lengthy litigation. Imani Mfalme, Community Defense of East Tennessee, who is part of a larger Participatory Defense Network and works to engage families and communities in their defense so that they feel empowered to change and move the system, all in an effort to end mass incarceration. Alison Mollman, ACLU of Alabama, who spearheads parole watch efforts in Alabama and has spent years fighting for transparency in parole proceedings and building relationships with parole board members, resulting in an increase in parole grant rates.