Prisoners' Legal Services (formerly Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services)

CONTACT:

8 Winter St., 11th floor
Boston, MA 02108
617-451-6238 ext. 112
www.mcls.net

Leslie Walker, Executive Director

DESCRIPTION:

There are about 23,000 prisoners in Massachusetts--46% white, 29% black, 24% Hispanic; 6% are women, 60% are functionally illiterate, 80% are addicts, 30% have Hepatitis C, and 4% are HIV positive. Dehumanization, brutalization, and despair. It is critical that prisoners retain some hope of fair treatment in the criminal justice system.

MCLS (est. 1972) is the Commonwealth's main provider of civil (not criminal) legal services to prisoners, parolees, probationers and their families. Funded by the Supreme Judicial Court, the Massachusetts Legal Assistance and Bar Associations, the MCLS is staffed by seven lawyers and three paralegals and offers administrative and legislative advocacy and litigation on physical and mental healthcare, guard-on-prisoner violence, physical conditions of confinement, and segregation/isolation. Its "Rapid Response to Brutality" program suggested by prisoners, delivers an attorney or law student with camera, within 48 hours of any reported violence to the two highest-security prisons to photograph injuries, get eyewitness testimony, and medical help for victims. With the Women's Bar Association it helps with child custody, rights to choose abortions and prenatal medical care. It has obtained broad injunctive relief against intolerable conditions--e.g., overcrowding--and has even succeeded in replacing three institutions. Donors are very much needed.

(2002: HUMAN SERVICES: Well-Being)