Special Projects

Learning from Civil Rights Lawsuits: A White Paper Series

Policies for Expanding Hepatitis C Testing and Treatment in United States Prisons and Jails

Effective Communication with Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Blind, and Low Vision Incarcerated People

Criteria and Procedures for Meaningful Parole Review for People Sentenced as Youth

Oral History Project

Attorney Elizabeth Alexander (Spring 2023)

Attorney John Boston (Spring 2023)

Attorney Tricia Herzfeld (Spring 2023)

Attorney Deborah LaBelle (Spring 2023)

Attorney and Professor Michael Mushlin (Spring 2023)

Attorney and Professor Lucas Guttentag (Fall 2023)

Attorney William Yeomans (Fall 2023)

Attorney and Professor Michael Steinberg (Spring 2024)

Criminal Justice Policies

Prison and Jail Grievance Policies: Lessons from a Fifty-State Survey

Criminal Justice Document Repository

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Learning from Civil Rights Lawsuits: A White Paper Series

The Clearinghouse is developing white papers that explore promising practices and recommended policies based on the litigation materials in our collection. Each white paper focuses on a different criminal justice related topic, offering guidance for litigation and non-litigation reform paths. The white papers also demonstrate how to access and use cases and documents in the Clearinghouse.

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White Paper: Policies for Expanding Hepatitis C Testing and Treatment in United States Prisons and Jails

By: Tessa Bialek, Managing Attorney, Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse & Matthew J. Akiyama, M.D., M.Sc., Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Divisions of General Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease, Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine

April 19, 2023

This project proposes model policies for scaling up Hepatitis C virus (HCV) testing and treatment in United States prisons and jails. It also collects and makes available litigation documents and other materials related to HCV testing and treatment in prisons and jails, including: settlement agreements; judicial opinions; expert and monitor reports; and existing HCV policies.

Photo: Annie Flanagan

White Paper: Effective Communication with Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Blind, and Low Vision Incarcerated People

By: Tessa Bialek, Managing Attorney, and Margo Schlanger, Director, Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

July 7, 2022

This project proposes model policies for jails and prisons to serve the needs of deaf, hard of hearing, blind, and low vision people in their custody and to comply with federal anti-discrimination law. It also collects and makes available litigation documents and other materials relating to prisoners with communication disabilities, including: settlement agreements; judicial opinions; expert and monitor reports; and existing prison and jail ADA/disability policies.

White Paper: Criteria and Procedures for Meaningful Parole Review for People Sentenced as Youth

By: Tessa Bialek, Managing Attorney, Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

May 2, 2024

This project offers model policies to support robust, accurate, and meaningful parole review for people serving long sentences for crimes committed as youth. It also collects and makes available litigation materials, policy documents, and other resources relating to parole reform, and legal challenges to parole systems, for this cohort.

Oral History Project

The Clearinghouse's Oral History Project includes interviews conducted by Michigan Law students with preeminent civil rights attorneys about their backgrounds and careers, including the landmark civil rights cases to which they have contributed.

Interview: Attorney Elizabeth Alexander (Spring 2023)

By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

March 9, 2023

An oral history interview with attorney Elizabeth Alexander, conducted by Michigan Law 2L Liz Lewis on March 9, 2023. In this interview, attorney Elizabeth Alexander discusses her early life and activism, law school education, and path to a career as a prisoners' rights lawyer. She also reflects on her prisoners' rights litigation work with the ACLU National Prison Project, including arguing the monumental Farmer v. Brennan case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Interview: Attorney John Boston (Spring 2023)

By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

April 7, 2023

An oral history interview with attorney John Boston, conducted by Michigan Law 2L Liz Lewis on April 7, 2023, and April 13, 2023. In this interview, attorney John Boston discusses several lawsuits challenging jail and prison conditions in New York City and the State of New York that he worked on during his tenure at The Legal Aid Society's Prisoners' Rights Project. These lawsuits addressed overcrowding, health care, violence, educational services, and other conditions of confinement issues. Attorney Boston reflects on lessons learned through this advocacy, including various pathways to reform and the interplay between legislation, like the Prison Litigation Reform Act, and litigation.

Interview: Attorney Tricia Herzfeld (Spring 2023)

By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

April 1, 2024

An oral history interview with attorney Tricia Herzfeld, conducted by Michigan Law 3L Alanna Autler on April 7, 2023. This oral history interview with civil rights lawyer Tricia Herzfeld details attorney Herzfeld's work with the ACLU of Tennessee on lawsuits involving the Occupy Nashville movement, immigration raids, and public access to private prison records.

Interview: Attorney Deborah LaBelle (Spring 2023)

By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

May 4, 2023

An oral history interview with attorney Deborah LaBelle, conducted by Michigan Law 2L Liz Lewis on May 4, 2023. In this interview, attorney Deborah LaBelle recounts her early life and path to a career as a civil rights lawyer. She discusses her work on lawsuits challenging unconstitutional conditions of confinement for women and juveniles in Michigan's prison system, as well as her advocacy addressing juvenile life without parole, the Flint water crisis, and reproductive justice. Attorney LaBelle also describes the human rights model of advocacy that informs her work and offers advice for aspiring civil rights lawyers.

Interview: Attorney and Professor Michael Mushlin (Spring 2023)

By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

July 22, 2023

Oral history interviews with attorney and professor Michael Mushlin conducted by Michigan Law 3L Alanna Autler on March 30, 2023, and April 14, 2023. These interviews with attorney and Professor Michael Mushlin address his childhood in Meridian, Mississippi, his education, and his early career, as well as his time as a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society's Prisoners' Rights Project. During his time with the Project, Professor Mushlin litigated several cases on behalf of pre-trial detainees in New York City's jail system. In these interviews, Professor Mushlin reflects on those cases and their legacy, as well as the effect of the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

Interview: Attorney and Professor Lucas Guttentag (Fall 2023)

By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

December 21, 2023

An oral history interview with attorney and professor Lucas Guttentag, conducted by Michigan Law 2L Carlos Hurtado-Esteve on December 21, 2023. In this interview, civil rights lawyer and law professor Lucas Guttentag discusses his background and career trajectory, which has included senior policy positions at the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice, as well as his work as founder and director of the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project. The interview focuses, in particular, on cases that Professor Guttentag litigated during his time with the Immigrant Rights Project, including lawsuits challenging legislation eliminating judicial review of removal orders, combatting indefinite detention of Haitian refugees at Guantanamo Naval Base, and reshaping asylum adjudications for Central American refugees.

Interview: Attorney William Yeomans (Fall 2023)

By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

April 5, 2024

An oral history interview with attorney William Yeomans, conducted by Michigan Law 2L Pilar Martinez on November 16, 2023. This interview with attorney William Yeomans focuses, in particular, on the work that attorney Yeomans did over the course of more than two decades with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, including cases involving school desegregation, housing discrimination, hate crimes, police misconduct, and voting rights.

Interview: Attorney and Professor Michael Steinberg (Spring 2024)

By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

March 22, 2024

An oral history interview with attorney and professor Michael Steinberg, conducted by Michigan Law 2L Andrew Eslich on March 22, 2024. In this interview, civil rights lawyer and professor Michael Steinberg discusses his background and path to civil rights lawyering as well as his work as legal director of the ACLU of Michigan, including a lawsuit that sought press and public access to immigration proceedings, a case challenging property tax assessments in Detroit in the wake of the 2008 recession, and a lawsuit alleging violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act in Flint.

Criminal Justice Policies

The Clearinghouse has collected criminal-justice-related policies and posts them here.

Photo courtesy of Ruth Morgan

Repository: Prison and Jail Grievance Policies: Lessons from a Fifty-State Survey

By: Michigan Law Prison Information Project

October 18, 2015

This project was completed in 2015 is by a group of Michigan Law students. They collected, analyzed, and summarized prisoner grievance policies from 53 Departments of Correction (for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, each state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico), and the nation’s 12 largest metropolitan jails. Each policy itself—obtained via the web or by Freedom of Information Act requests—is available below. In addition, we post a 2006 set of links to grievance polices for every state prison system, and a number of jails, organized by state.

Repository: Criminal Justice Document Repository

By: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

July 1, 2022

This repository launched in November 2014. It includes policies from nearly every state prison system and a dozen or so of the nation’s largest jails.

Learning from Civil Rights Lawsuits: A White Paper Series

Policies for Expanding Hepatitis C Testing and Treatment in United States Prisons and Jails

Effective Communication with Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Blind, and Low Vision Incarcerated People

Criteria and Procedures for Meaningful Parole Review for People Sentenced as Youth

Oral History Project

Attorney Elizabeth Alexander (Spring 2023)

Attorney John Boston (Spring 2023)

Attorney Tricia Herzfeld (Spring 2023)

Attorney Deborah LaBelle (Spring 2023)

Attorney and Professor Michael Mushlin (Spring 2023)

Attorney and Professor Lucas Guttentag (Fall 2023)

Attorney William Yeomans (Fall 2023)

Attorney and Professor Michael Steinberg (Spring 2024)

Criminal Justice Policies

Prison and Jail Grievance Policies: Lessons from a Fifty-State Survey

Criminal Justice Document Repository