Skip to Content

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

Flashlight icon

No results found!

Justice is not the same as the law

Justice is not the same as the law

image description
The methodology of abusers is the exact same methodology that the state uses. These kinds of harms are replicated like a motherfucker in nonprofit industrial complex. We replicated state violence - vomited back up on each other” Monica Cosby
The system may say that they're broken, because they don't have these things. Really put it in perspective, like, okay, people have been blocked out, we've gone through systems that have isolated us and determined this is broken, but how do I find the meaning and value in that? The power of that? This to me is so personal.” Jhody Polk
image description
Nakishia Sullivan It is so funny how they make these laws probably back in 1940. And then like now its 2023 and no laws have changed. I mean, it's kind of like it's designed to make you go back for whatever reason.
image description
I am my own justice
I had to stand up for me
That’s who I am
The system is not what it says it is
The justice system has fish scales over its eyes
The people on here are pulling the fish scales off the eyes of justice
Who is justice for really?! Who is justice really for?
How many people are willing to stand for justice?” Hattie Jones
The system will never change - knowing that in order to be free in my own space. The system is working how it is designed to work. The constitution was written to enslave people.
Unless it is rewritten – my resistance is learning that I’m in control of my own space.
I can be resistant in myself and know it is what the system is designed to make you constantly work harder Tiara Howlett
image description
Switch views
Justice is not the same as the law
move your mouse in any direction — horizontally, vertically, or diagonally —to uncover additional content
Back to top