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ethics of care

Welcome.

Get to know jailhouse lawyers and their loved ones through the words, wisdom, and experiences of incarcerated individuals who teach themselves the law to advocate for themselves and the rights of their peers. 

Please take care as you interact with these stories as they provide insight into alternatives and solutions to mass incarceration, but also touch upon difficult content, including confinement, medical neglect, and death, and retaliation that jailhouse lawyers routinely experience– from solitary confinement to transfers and restrictions on accessing law libraries and resources – simply because they seek to know, use, and shape law.

Additionally, please approach this website with respect, care, responsibility, including without an intent of exploitation.

This website was crafted on these principles, and we hope you enter this space feeling the same.

– Flashlights Team

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Recognizing the need for a feminist approach within a participatory action research framework, we created Feminist Circles within and outside of prisons as a tool and shared space for healing and connection, as well as to better understand why women were not engaging with and relating to the law in the same manner as their male counterparts and why women were not responding to the call for Jailhouse Lawyers.

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Today, circles are regularly convened online every third Friday to bring together women who use, teach, and transform the law from within prison walls, as well as formerly incarcerated women, allies, and partners who experience the law from various positions in the legal ecosystem.

Feminist Circles provide a safe and supportive space for women to exchange their experiences, aspirations, challenges, needs, and strategies to navigate, share, and transform the law from the inside out. Not only are we uncovering powerful learnings about gender and the law, but we are also building communities of love and power.

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