The ACLU of Oregon is excited to announce our partnership with CLEAR Clinic! In this partnership, CLEAR Clinic and ACLU of Oregon are collaborating to receive and respond to requests for legal assistance from people incarcerated in Oregon’s prisons and jails.
“We are honored to have CLEAR Clinic’s direct service expertise in creating and providing legal resources to people who are incarcerated,” says Kelly Simon, Legal Director of ACLU of Oregon.
For decades, the ACLU of Oregon has operated an intake program with the support of a team of volunteers. A significant portion of intakes each year were from people in Oregon’s prisons and jails. Between September 2022 and September 2023, the ACLU of Oregon received approximately 200 requests from incarcerated Oregonians.
As the ACLU of Oregon transitions away from its legal intake program, this new partnership with CLEAR Clinic is an incredible opportunity to sustain the important role of the intake program for incarcerated Oregonians and increase the organization's staff capacity to develop impact litigation strategies.
Together we hope to:
- Increase access to justice for people who are incarcerated by providing them with information about their rights and self-help resources to vindicate them when they are being violated
- Maintain and grow connections between incarcerated Oregonians and the Oregon legal community
- Increase court oversight of and insight into how Oregon’s jails and prisons treat people in their care
- Increase the number of attorneys who advocate for the rights of incarcerated Oregonians
ABOUT THE CLEAR CLINIC:
The CLEAR Clinic is well equipped to take on this project due to their large-scale community-based criminal record relief project and open-access legal services. The CLEAR Clinic also receives many communications from adults in custody, in part due to having completed legal clinics, which include criminal record expungement services, for adults currently in custody in Oregon. Very few attorneys have a practice that litigates habeas or other prisoner rights cases. This opportunity gap is what the partnership seeks to narrow by empowering incarcerated people to assert their rights more effectively.
“This partnership is a natural fit for our clinic, where we provide broad scale access to justice for folks impacted by the criminal legal system, both in and out of custody. We're experienced in providing legal services that are limited in scope, but still life-changing, to a large number of people. We are excited to leverage this experience to help adults in custody access desperately needed legal resources,” says Leni Tupper, Director of CLEAR Clinic.
Check out our list of frequently asked questions to learn more about this work and partnership!
