Word: prisons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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About 70 students, some of them undergraduates, give time to the project, which was founded in 1970 and gets funds for an office manager, supervising attorney, and other expenses from the Law School. Every month PLAP members represent about 25 indigent prison and jail inmates at disciplinary, classification, and parole-related hearings...
This semester, for the first time, students can get credit for doing PLAP work if they are enrolled in a new seminar in prison law being taught by Jay Pottenger, a visiting professor from Yale. "That's a real breakthrough for us," says third-year law student Tracy Thorleifson. "We've been working on getting a prison law course here since before my 1L year...
Inmates who were interviewed about PLAP for the most part had nothing but good things to say. One woman who is in prison on a larceny charge, who asked not to be named, said of PLAP that "it will help get things moving. Without these people here, I'd be sitting here no telling how long...
Futch's situation is special because, unlike most PLAP cases, which are handled within the prison by law students, his may be brought to court. On November 13, PLAP filed on his behalf in Norfolk Superior Court, and the state Department of Corrections filed a response December 27. PLAP will now either go to court or file a motion to have the judge decide the case in a summary judgement...
Futch's problem is going further than most because PLAP members believe it raises significant First Amendment issues about inmates' freedom of thought and expression. "My feeling is that prison administrators want total control. They're terrified of the written word," says Martin C. Gideons, PLAP's supervising attorney, who is the attorney of record for the Futch case...