Reilly is a PLAP Office Hours supervisor and a member of the JD class of 2027.
I joined PLAP on the advice of an HLS grad I used to work with. He told me I would get good experience. “It’s really cool.” He was right–I did get good experiencelitigating, building relationships with clients, and crafting legal arguments. It’s been really cool. But PLAP for me has been about a lot more than legal skills. I’velearned three things from my clients that I wish everyone, and especially anyone who wants to put people in prison, knew.
First, being in prison is terrible. Lots of people think that’s the point, but substantive theories of punishment aside, there’s a lot about life in prison that should offendanyone. Like that many incarcerated people, like my client Mr. P, work full time for $1 an hour. Or that, despite the Massachusetts Legislature’s attempt to ban it, MAprisons still use solitary confinement both administratively and as punishment. My very first client, Mr. J, got a disciplinary ticket for using a cloth to cover his cellwindow while he used the toilet and shouting at the guard when the guard knocked it down. That day, staff “lugged” him to the Behavioral Assessment Unit (BAU),where he got only a few hours out of his cell, spent either handcuffed to a table or standing in an outdoor cage. When I visited him, he was marched into the room inchains, one officer at each arm. He struggled to shake my hand because his right hand was cuffed to the desk. These incredibly restrictive conditions are basicallyidentical to those banned by the MA Legislature in the 2018 Criminal Justice Reform Act, but the Department of Correction claims that the BAU and other restrictiveunits are not covered by the law. But whether they’re in solitary, mental health housing, or general population, I have seen the dehumanizing and demoralizing effectof every part of our clients’ lives being subject to the whims of the prison and its staff, from getting lugged to the BAU to where they can be to how they can spendtheir time.
Which brings me to my second point: it’s incredibly rewarding to work with people stuck in this system. Even though many disciplinary reports are absolutelyunfounded, and the adjudicator at disciplinary hearings is themself a correctional officer, and the superintendent has to my knowledge never reversed the hearingofficer’s conclusion – in other words, even though the deck is pretty well stacked – it has meant so much to me to be the person who listens and cares about myclients’ side of the story. And in parole cases, where we’re fighting not to exculpate a client of an in-prison violation but to get them home for good, it is so inspiring tohelp get people out of the violent and dehumanizing prison environment. And I know that our clients appreciate our help, because every semester we are inundatedwith requests for representation, even though fighting a disciplinary ticket can draw the frustration of the very correctional staff who control our clients’ lives.
Third, and most importantly, I have learned so much about resilience from my clients. As a student advocate, it’s frustrating to deal with the obstacles to representation–the inability to call our clients, the 5+ hours it takes to meet in person, the days of delay in sending mail. But I have been inspired over and over by the grace and strength that my clients exhibit in an environment that tells them they don’t matter. Mr. S taught himself about his rights and drafted his own legal arguments for his defense. When I visited, he gave me several pages of arguments written in beautiful longhand. Mr. P buys Christmas gifts for every one of his over two dozen coworkers every year–this year it was packaged cheesecakes. Mr. J refused to plea out to the ticket he got over yelling at the staff member, even though he was offered several ‘good’ plea deals, because he wanted to stand up for the principle that the guard had acted wrongly. When it is easiest to keep their heads down, our clients assert their rights.
PLAP has hundreds of members this year, but we always have more prisoners who need help. There is something for everyone in PLAP, whether its functional legalskills or the kinds of lessons I’ve learned from my clients.