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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 telling our stories

Justice is telling our stories

My grandma passed in my first year of incarceration
I woke up the other morning just needing her. I had to grab her picture and hold on to her.
I am recognizing while you were talking that she is part of the bridge that is within me Jhody Polk
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Qiana Johnson I came home with fire and passion to help Black women who are formerly incarcerated
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Nakishia Sullivan And I think its not so much about trusting [this space], I’m just hoping that my story is gonna be able to help another mother, you know what I'm saying? Because that's really what it's about. It ain't really about me. I mean, I don't harbor any secrets - like holding it in. Saying it, letting it out, it's freeing me but it's also for somebody else because somebody else’s child, somebody else might get out of prison tomorrow [and something bad could happen]. And mentally they will think that they got to go back to prison and they don't.
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inside feminist circle member, Florida
I don't feel whole when I'm remaining silent on certain controversial issues that move and inspire me. Its like an inferno that can only be put out by the waters of words spoken in due season. Sometimes there is a season for silence and other times there is a season to rouse, wake up and speak like never before. These are the times for every woman, no matter the station, to speak up, speak out, empower, reach back and help each other. Kenya Hill
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Inside feminist circle member, Texas
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I know exactly what it's like to not feel whole and incomplete when you don't or can't utilize your voice. There are other things of course that can bring these feelings about but for me that will never be one of them, ever again. Brendalyn Lane
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Justice is telling our stories
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