by Aaron Henry
The year is 1973. A group of friends were sitting down talking in someone’s home. They started to talk about how individuals get incarcerated and likely don’t know all of their rights and legalities.
These friends started an organization called the Lewisburg Prison Project. Now, 44 years later, the Lewisburg Prison Project assists inmates nationwide with the conditions of their confinement. They let inmates know their rights and how to make their life easier in prison and when they are released.
A lot of prisoners don’t know about their legal rights and what they legally can or cannot do while being incarcerated. The Lewisburg Prison Project provides direct help to prisoners to help them understand and to live a better life when released.
The organization also provides legal bulletins to prisoners, responds to their requests for information, advises them on legal matters, intercedes on their behalf with prison staff, and represents them in court. For jails and prisons in Central Pennsylvania, they conduct legal visits with inmates. These locations include Lewisburg, Canaan, and Schuylkill, which are the federal prisons. It also includes 12 state prisons, and 34 county jails.
“We want to make sure these inmates know their rights,” Alex Skitolsky said. He is the Outreach Coordinator for the Lewisburg Prison Project. His job is to primarily raise awareness, maintain the organization’s social media presence, manage the mailing list, and supervise interns from colleges. Skitolsky said inmates might not know what they are entitled to, such as legal representation, and what steps to take when they are released.
The Lewisburg Prison Project has gained recognition with the Institutional Law Project. It was also featured in the Marshall Project. The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system.The investigation by the Marshal Project found violence between prisoners is six times more likely at Lewisburg, compared with all federal prisons.
In Lewisburg Prison, two men were put together in a solitary confinement cell for 23 to 24 hours a day. One of those prisoners had a mental disorder and lacked access to mental health care. “You can only imagine how that experience was for two inmates, especially an inmate that isn’t mentally stable,” Skitolsky said.
Documents obtained by the Marshall Project showed that inmate-on-inmate attacks are a near daily occurrence and that at least four men have been attacked and killed by their cellmates since 2009 .
Something that the organization is limited to is advertising themselves to prison inmates. Inmates find out about the organization from word of mouth from prisoners.
http://civilrights.findlaw.com/other-constitutional-rights/rights-of-inmates.html
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