Release Day

For eighteen years, California’s three strikes law leveled harsh penalties against repeat felons: anyone with two felony convictions received 25 years to life for committing a third felony. In 2012, Californians voted to change the three strikes law, allowing some of the prisoners sentenced under it to petition for release for time served. Curtis Penn is one of those prisoners. Life of the Law executive producer Nancy Mullane chronicles the day Curtis was released from prison.

On Prison and Pregnancy

United States incarcerates six times as many women as it did thirty years ago. Many of these women are already mothers, and four percent of incarcerated women enter prison pregnant. What happens to the babies born in the correctional system? What happens to the children left behind, as their mothers serve out their sentences?

A Criminal Debt

It’s not unusual at all to leave prison anywhere across the country owing fees, fines, or other costs to the local court. The city of Philadelphia alone is trying to collect some $1.5 billion in judicial debt owed back to days of the Nixon Administration. But should courts try to collect from a population, ex-inmates, who have 70 percent unemployment rate?

Behind the Walls of the Most Restricted Cells

In California, there is one place where people considered to be the most dangerous inmates are incarcerated, it’s called the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison. Life of the Law Executive Producer, Nancy Mullane, pushes for access to this prison’s most restricted cells and to the people who are living inside them.

Jailhouse Lawyers

In California, there are hundreds if not thousands of people practicing criminal law though they’ve never passed a bar exam. They don’t wear suits. They don’t have secretaries. And they can’t bill for their time. They’re called Jailhouse Lawyers. They’re inmates who pursue the equivalent of a lawyer’s education and who work as lawyers from within prison walls.

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