Annual Conference 2024
On October 15-17, 2024, the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative housed at the Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at NYU School of Law is hosting Flashlights: Jailhouse Lawyers, Legal Empowerment and Building a Just World Together, a historic convening of jailhouse lawyers in dialogue with justice allies that illuminates the power and promise of legal empowerment to advance justice from the inside out.
For too long the loudest voices against mass incarceration have come from outside prison walls. Flashlights seeks to change this. This first of its kind gathering calls on the public to shift their gaze inward to prisons and jails across the country and hear directly from jailhouse lawyers–invisible defenders who have been pursuing justice from behind prison walls. Jailhouse lawyers are incarcerated individuals who teach themselves the law to advocate for themselves and the rights of their peers. They operate in deep isolation, with access to few resources at a high risk of retaliation for simply doing legal work. Despite these challenges, they have had a profound impact on the legal landscape of America, freeing their peers from incarceration, serving as counselors, mentors and teachers to their incarcerated community members and their families, and doing so with extraordinary humanity and resilience. Jailhouse lawyers are an essential part of reforming and abolishing the carceral system, and yet their stories are rarely known. Flashlights seeks to change this.
Rooted in legal empowerment, Flashlights makes visible the transformative possibilities that come from shifting power, knowledge, and resources to directly affected communities so they can know, use, and shape the law. In so doing, directly impacted communities activate systems, lead justice struggles, and become the authors of their own liberation. During this groundbreaking gathering, jailhouse lawyers will be in conversation with educators, advocates, artists, researchers and more as they reflect on how legal empowerment and jailhouse lawyering advances justice from the inside out. Speakers will reflect on the role of jailhouse lawyers as human rights defenders, dialogue on effective inside-out strategies, share thoughts on building international solidarity and voice, interrogate the unique experiences of women jailhouse lawyers, and explore how jailhouse lawyers in collaboration with allies are changing the way law is practiced within law schools, on the streets, and in the courtrooms.
Read the full conference program.
Date: October 15-17, 2024
*CLE offered