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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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Justice is being in community

Justice is being in community

In the midst of me being in near all the grievances –all this administration,the debts, the corrections officers bothering me – thats okay, I'll be in a law library. I'm not giving up, you're not gonna break me. They took my marriage. You're not breaking me. I'm still gonna walk around with a smile. I'm still who I am. Pavette Kelmen
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I wanted to go back into prison
I was struggling being outside
The first time I had positive relationships with women was in prison
Those women were in there for life
They taught me how to bathe, how to walk, they filled me up
They turned my light on
When I came home and I didn’t have that kind of love
Someone in prison told me every day they loved me
Not one time did I ever feel alone
Or unloved or unneeded
I am still part of the sisterhood Jhody Polk
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In a way we were very lucky to be in a prison environment that was fairly progressive More than that - the woman before us fought for certain rights and certain changes that we were able to use in that space. As long as I stay rooted in that sense of this is my life Where you are is where you are, who you are is where you are There is a sense of continuity for me... Judy Clark
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Jhody Polk We recognize that our neighborhoods can be incarcerated - relationships can be incarcerated
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Justice isbeing in community
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