Bending the Arc of Justice

How Berkeley Law’s faculty and students are fighting for fairness throughout the criminal legal system, from police reform to invasive technology.

By Gwyneth K. Shaw
Illustration by Judith Rudd
Illustration

Bending the Arc of Justice

How Berkeley Law’s faculty and students are fighting for fairness throughout the criminal legal system, from police reform to invasive technology.

By Gwyneth K. Shaw
Illustration by Judith Rudd
S

tretching back decades, Berkeley Law has been a leading academic driver of multifaceted efforts to make the American criminal justice system more fair.

With public and political interest seemingly at a high water mark, the school’s faculty and students are seizing the opportunity — with pathbreaking scholarship, policy advocacy, and hands-on work.

“Today is perhaps the most exciting era ever for rethinking criminal law and our punitive state at Berkeley Law,” says Professor Jonathan Simon — also an alumnus — who trained under early reform advocates Sanford Kadish, Caleb Foote, and Jerome Skolnick while in law school and as a Ph.D. student in the school’s Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) Program.

“The last time American society was questioning our punitive state as radically as is happening today was in 1968,” he says. “Then, as now, there were calls to reinvent policing to eliminate racism and dramatically reduce reliance on incarceration in favor of greater efforts to reintegrate people caught up in criminal conduct. Within five years, however, the reform movement was largely crushed and the country on a path toward mass incarceration.

“The odds are better now that we will end up with reforms, and possibly profound ones.”

Jonathan Simon working on his desk
LOOKING AHEAD: Jonathan Simon ’87 has written extensively about the perils of mass incarceration and the need for reform. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small
“The last time American society was questioning our punitive state as radically as is happening today was in 1968.”
— PROFESSOR JONATHAN SIMON
Innovative thinking across decades
The JSP Program, the nation’s first law school Ph.D. offering, was founded after UC Berkeley disbanded its criminology department in the 1970s. It established a prime hub for research and policy work on reform that remains strong today.

Professor Franklin Zimring, a Berkeley Law faculty member for almost 40 years, was one of the first scholars to sound the alarm on mass incarceration in his 1991 book The Scale of Imprisonment. Zimring, who won the 2020 Stockholm Prize in Criminology — the field’s top honor — has continued to study this issue, as well as gun violence and police killings, including in his acclaimed 2020 book The Insidious Momentum of American Mass Incarceration.

Work by Simon and Professor Emeritus Malcolm Feeley helped identify a key feature of crowded prisons: How the legal system’s targeting of groups is often justified in risk management terms, which has also helped frame the contemporary debate about algorithms in criminal justice reform.

Professor Ian Haney López added another front in the debate, making the case that structural racism was not just an effect of mass incarceration but a cause of it. Professor Avani Mehta Sood brings a psychologist’s lens to questions about how the legal system uses procedures and formats that conflict with what we know about how people actually respond. Professor Christopher Kutz, trained as a philosopher, explores criminal law through that frame.

One of the faculty’s newest members, Professor Osagie K. Obasogie, uses the social sciences to study how law and medicine can intersect to mask police violence and hinder attempts at holding officers accountable when this force becomes excessive. In a forthcoming article, he examines “excited delirium,” an increasingly popular term used by forensic pathologists to suggest that in-custody deaths can occur as a result of victims’ poor mental health, which is thought to create extreme agitation that leads to spontaneous death. As proponents of excited delirium tell it, police use of force often has little to do with these deaths.

“For poor, young, uneducated Black men in particular, a year or more in prison is now excruciatingly common.”
— PROFESSOR IAN HANEY LÓPEZ
Yet, Obasogie’s research suggests otherwise. His findings show that when excited delirium is used to describe why a person died in police custody, there is often striking evidence of excessive force used by law enforcement, such as broken bones and indications of other forms of trauma such as asphyxiation. Nevertheless, excited delirium continues to be used to describe the cause of death in several cases where police officers have killed community members, which can limit officers’ exposure to criminal charges and civil liability.

“This highlights how law and medicine can come together to obscure police violence to make in-custody deaths seem like unpredictable and blameless tragedies rather than a foreseeable part of the routine use of force by police,” Obasogie says. “It allows police violence to persist with little accountability, which is why it’s important to think across domains to understand how medicine is part of the problem and needs to be part of the solution.”

No stone unturned
Berkeley Law scholars are also examining the role police unions, prosecutors, and public defenders play in reform efforts. The school’s new Center for Law and Work held its debut symposium in January, which focused on using labor agreements as a tool for reshaping policing — something Co-Leader and Professor Catherine Fisk ’86 and retired U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson ’62 have written about.

And in his new book Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky argues that the higher rate of police killings of Black men stems from a half-century of Supreme Court decisions that have effectively allowed police and courts to presume that suspects — especially people of color — are guilty before being charged.

All of this work is paying off, Simon says, even as reform debates have become bogged down in disputes over what “defund the police” really means and a rise in homicides nationally reignites concerns about crime.

Winning Playbook for Abolishing Harmful Juvenile Fees

Y

outh and families in five states will no longer be crushed by debt from the juvenile legal system, thanks to the expertise and initiative of Berkeley Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic (PAC).

Driving the movement to abolish fees charged to children and their parents for myriad administrative costs, PAC led the policy charge to eliminate such fees in California — the first state to do so, in 2017. Next came Nevada, where two clinic students initiated a successful push to eliminate fees in 2019.

This year, clinic staff and students supported successful abolition campaigns in five more states — Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oregon, and Texas — that will no longer charge fees to youth in the juvenile system or their families. PAC has been directly involved in seven of the 10 states that reduced or eliminated juvenile fees since 2017.

“To make this kind of progress on such a deeply rooted problem has been tremendously gratifying, especially during these challenging times,” says Deputy Director Stephanie Campos-Bui ’14.

Juvenile courts often charge youth and families thousands of dollars for detention, supervision, electronic monitoring, drug testing, and “free” public defenders. PAC’s extensive research shows that the fees disproportionately harm low-income families and families of color — pushing them into debt and deeper into the juvenile system — and that local governments often spend more money chasing families to pay than they collect.

Group of people gathering
ON THE DOTTED LINE: After two years of work, Policy Advocacy Clinic alumni Marcos Mocine-McQueen ’21 (holding son) and Emma Atuire ’21 (in yellow) stand behind Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who signs a law on July 6 eliminating juvenile system fees in his state. Photo by Danny McCarthy
“Juvenile fees are a modern-day form of racialized wealth extraction with origins in the Black Codes and convict leasing,” says clinic Director Jeffrey Selbin.

The clinic’s winning playbook for abolishing fees focuses on partnering with local youth justice organizations; researching and analyzing state laws, practices, and impacts; consulting with probation officers, public defenders, and judges; and testifying before state legislatures.

Faculty supervise dozens of Berkeley law and public policy students in this effort. In addition to working on implementation in states that just passed bills, these students will support fee repeal initiatives in 15 states as PAC prepares to co-launch a national Campaign for Debt Free Justice this fall.

“This spate of historic reforms over just the last few months brings us a big step closer to the tipping point after which states that still authorize these harmful practices will be the exception and not the norm,” says Deputy Director Devan Shea.

PAC has also made an impact in the adult system, supporting a coalition that successfully advocated for a bill to repeal 23 fees in California and end the collection of $15.9 billion in outstanding debt — the first of its kind nationwide. The clinic is working to eradicate the remaining 63 adult fees and discharge billions of dollars more.

Selbin says, “It’s been a privilege to contribute to the larger movement to dismantle systems of racial and economic oppression while making a tangible difference in the lives of so many youth and families.” —Sarah Weld

“What’s driving this successful coalition in many large cities across the country is recognition that policing is outdated for dealing with the major public safety challenges of the early 21st century,” Simon asserts. “This includes persistent gun violence in pockets of our poorest communities, drug overdosing, and rampant mental health crises fed by an army of ill-housed people unable to self-care. Traditional cuffs and guns policing can do nothing about these problems and yet eats up half or more of the budget in many cities and counties — the latter including jails.”

What’s needed, he argues, are resources to promote healing and self-care, and funding for community organizations to provide needed services and jobs to the very networks that are suffering the brunt of the violence.

“That money need not come from policing,” Simon says. “But in the long run, it requires stable funding to be sustained and that has to come from tax revenues, not once and done federal stimulus funds.”

Portrait of Woman
UNEQUAL RIGHTS: Seminal research by Professors Andrea Roth (left) and Rebecca Wexler highlights how prosecutors consistently gain pivotal advantages over criminal defense lawyers in various facets of their cases. Photo by Jim Block
“Those barriers to transparency and accountability are legal issues — they’re the responsibility of the law, and we at Berkeley Law can help to fix them.”
— PROFESSOR REBECCA WEXLER
Matching the pace of tech change
With the legal system adopting new technology-based methods for identifying, prosecuting, and sentencing suspects, Berkeley Law’s scholars have dug in and identified both problems and solutions. They’re also scrutinizing the way everyday tools such as smartphones are reshaping evidence and other rules.

“Computers change the playing field of criminal law in so many ways,” says Professor Orin Kerr, a prominent expert in computer crime and Fourth Amendment law. “They can give the government new ways to gather information. They can also give people new ways to commit crimes, making some crimes harder to detect and investigate. It’s a complicated picture. It’s a new world.”

Proposition 69, which California voters passed in 2004, mandated taking DNA samples from people who have only been arrested for an offense, not convicted. It also enabled prosecutors to require giving a DNA sample as a condition of getting a plea offer or dismissal, even for minor offenses like walking a dog off-leash — a practice adopted in Orange County and known colloquially as “spit and acquit.”

Not surprisingly, that combination dramatically expanded the state’s DNA database to include many people who have never been convicted or who have been convicted of crimes that would otherwise not require a sample.

Professor Andrea Roth wrote a 2019 California Law Review article that brought Orange County’s program into the public eye. She is carefully watching new advances in the DNA evidence sector, including faster analysis that will help clear backlogs but might not be fully accurate.

“We have algorithms that now claim to be able to tell with near certainty whether a person was a contributor to a complex DNA mixture, the author of a note, or at a particular location on a map,” Roth says. “If this new type of proof were proven to be reliable, there would still be legitimacy and dignity problems with the processes being so opaque. But most aren’t proven reliable.”

Some of these algorithms, like Google Earth, are relied on by millions of people in everyday life; some are created largely for forensic purposes. The current system of criminal procedure, discovery, and evidence law reflects the need for defendants to be able to scrutinize the state’s proof — but those rules are built for human witnesses, not machines and algorithms.

“The inability to better scrutinize these processes — through independent stress testing of the software, analysis of the source code if necessary, unfettered and free defense access to the software, access to the software license for independent academic researchers to conduct validation studies, and the like — is a serious fairness and accuracy problem,” Roth says. 

A skewed tool can mean the difference between an innocent and guilty verdict, or probation and a long prison sentence. And, as Professor Rebecca Wexler has shown in her research, defendants are often at a disadvantage because their lawyers can’t access the underpinnings of what’s being used against them.

“Unfortunately, a variety of legal secrecy doctrines are obstructing transparency and scrutiny of these tools, including insufficient reporting and disclosure mandates, intellectual property, evidentiary privileges, and contract law,” she says. “Those barriers to transparency and accountability are legal issues — they’re the responsibility of the law, and we at Berkeley Law can help to fix them.”

Wexler sees traction for efforts to level the playing field, and she’s hopeful they will continue to progress. At the same time, she’s concerned about the growing outsourcing of investigative and forensic functions to the private sector. When private companies collect location information, for instance, the Fourth Amendment generally doesn’t apply — even if the companies then turn around and sell that data to law enforcement.

“Outsourcing investigative and forensic functions to private software companies can similarly gut other procedural safeguards,” Wexler says. “But as we’re automating more and more, that’s what’s happening.”

Group of people
TECH SAVVY: Megan Graham (top left) of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic confers with students about a project on search warrants for electronic devices and social media accounts. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small

Reshaping the Classroom Narrative on Domestic Violence

W

hen Nancy Lemon attended Berkeley Law from 1977 to 1980, there was no course on domestic violence. No casebook. No pro bono or clinical work.

“There was no discussion of domestic violence — no student groups, no guest speakers, nothing. It just didn’t exist on our radar at all,” she says. “So when I got a job working in the field, everything was totally new. I was learning on the job.”

At the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, Lemon found powerful mentors, including Eva Paterson ’75 and Pauline Gee. It was still a relatively new idea that police and prosecutors had a role in punishing abusers and protecting victims from further harm, and the process of representing survivors included help navigating the system.

In 1988, Lemon got a surprising call from her alma mater, asking her to teach its first domestic violence course. She agreed — and for more than 30 years has not just taught that course but also dramatically expanded Berkeley Law’s offerings.

The lack of a casebook meant she had to write one. The dearth of hands-on opportunities prompted her to organize them. The Domestic Law Violence Practicum, which Lemon directs, now places students with more than two dozen organizations, including the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office Domestic Violence Unit, the Family Violence Law Center in Oakland, and the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant.

Amy Reavis ’22, who took Lemon’s classes as a 2L, relished exploring and critiquing the anti-violence movement’s history, meeting practitioners, and working directly with survivors.

Portrait of Nancy Lemon
HER OWN TRAIL: A leading authority on domestic violence law for four decades, faculty member Nancy Lemon ’80 has pioneered its study in law schools and authored the leading textbook on the subject. Photo by Darius Riley
“Professor Lemon is a founding mother of the field of domestic violence law. Her kindness, humanity, experience, and growth-mindset all make for a great classroom environment,” Reavis says. “Her connections and expertise in this field are unparalleled and create a great learning and networking experience.”

Lemon’s work with students even extended to founding a nonprofit organization (the Family Violence Appellate Project, where she is the legal director) with some of her pupils.

Plenty has changed since 1980, particularly the students’ familiarity with the topic.

“Now they’re asking much more sophisticated questions and writing much more sophisticated papers,” Lemon says. “And from what they’re telling me, other teachers have also started to include domestic violence discussions in their classes, including Constitutional Law and Torts.

“You could talk about this in almost any class, but that’s not the way it used to be.”

Lemon finds teaching enormously gratifying, especially when students say her class was their favorite in law school.

“Many tell me they didn’t think there was a place for them in the legal system before that,” she says. “And then they came away from it with a sense of meaning and belonging, a sense that this was what they wanted to do in the world.

“I’m really happy when people say ‘I’ve found my calling.’ That’s a key part of why I’m here.” —Gwyneth K. Shaw

“If you want to be a public defender, you need real competency about technology. In reality, it’s pervading all areas of law.”
— Samuelson Clinic Supervising Attorney MEGAN GRAHAM
Fighting for fairness
Outside the school walls, Berkeley Law’s clinical, pro bono, and field placement programs, and many of its Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects [see infographic below], let students take their quest for reform into the real world.

Last year, the Death Penalty Clinic released an exhaustive study that found people of color — especially African Americans — were disproportionately excluded from California juries through prosecutors’ peremptory challenges. The report prompted the state legislature to pass a reform bill aimed at making juries more representative of California’s demographics.

A recent International Human Rights Law Clinic report exposed how Oakland police often traumatize the families of murder victims a second time, through discriminatory treatment, devastating financial burdens, and psychological trauma, with inadequate government support.

A years-long effort by the Policy Advocacy Clinic to abolish steep, regressive fines and fees in criminal cases is sparking change around the country [see Winning Playbook]. The East Bay Community Law Center is fighting against the longstanding practice of criminalizing poverty and the inability to access housing as a way to drive poor people away from commercial districts.

And the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic is pushing on several fronts. Just two examples: Forcing the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Justice Department to disclose records about their monitoring of confidential attorney-client emails, and advocating for the removal of copyright restrictions on California’s jury instructions.

Megan Graham, a supervising attorney at the clinic, and students are working with public defenders to help them better advocate for their clients on technology issues, running tech-specific trainings for public defenders and defense attorneys. She and students have also provided tailored advice, templates, and tools to public defenders on issues that come up often, from device searches to facial recognition to challenges over the Stored Communications Act.

“So much of the use of technology in the criminal legal system is secret that it can be daunting to try to spot — let alone litigate — tech issues,” Graham says. “The trainings and the students’ clinical work aim to close the gap.”

At this pivotal moment, sustaining the reform movement will require cutting through what Simon calls “the fog of misunderstanding” around crime and policing after decades of messaging that more punishment will make us safer. The research, policy, and advocacy work happening at Berkeley Law will continue to push the pace on meaningful change.

“We’re still recovering from half a century of racialized and politicized crime hysteria which will probably not abate until my generation — Baby Boomers — leaves the political stage,” Simon says. “A lot of my optimism leans on Millennials and even younger people, like our current students, who have a long agenda of urgent issues for our legal and political order to tackle and who don’t share their parents’ extreme fear of crime.”

Student Initiatives Target Criminal Justice

Berkeley Law’s Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects develop lawyering and leadership skills while serving the community. Founded by Berkeley Law students and open to all of them, these projects involve direct client service, legal research, educational outreach, and community organizing.

Students help close the justice gap, gain practice skills, alleviate burdens, and receive valuable training, supervision, and mentoring. Several initiatives focus squarely on criminal justice issues:

Contra Costa Reentry Project
  • Helps the Contra Costa County Office of the Public Defender Clean Slate practice by working to remove barriers a prior conviction can present to employment, housing, public benefits, and family reunification
  • Enables students to research eligibility for reclassification or record clearance, and to draft expungement applications and petitions
  • Assists in providing legal services at community outreach events and Clean Slate workshops
DA Accountability and Participatory Defense Project
  • Works on projects to support Oakland’s Urban Peace Movement, which builds youth leadership in Oakland to combat community violence and mass incarceration in communities of color
  • Prepares family members from the participatory defense hub to present statements about their incarcerated loved ones
  • Writes reports, compiles data, conducts legal research and writing about local criminal policies, and prepares educational materials
Post-Conviction Advocacy Project
  • Trains students to assist incarcerated people in California with the parole process
  • Pairs law students with individuals serving life sentences to help get them ready for and represent them at their parole hearing under supervision from attorneys at UnCommon Law
  • Ensures that indigent prisoners, who regularly receive inadequate representation from board-appointed attorneys, are well prepared for and supported at their hearings
Prisoner Advocacy Network
  • Supports people incarcerated in California state prisons with severe unmet needs, including those in solitary confinement, security housing units, administrative segregation, and gender-based segregation
  • Provides nonlitigation advocacy for those experiencing discrimination, retaliation, medical needs, and civil rights violations
  • Works with activists and jailhouse lawyers who are advocating for their rights from the inside
Reentry Advocacy Project
  • Coordinates with Root & Rebound, an Oakland nonprofit founded by Berkeley Law alumni, to provide legal information to individuals reentering society from prison
  • Offers public education, direct legal services, and policy advocacy to low-income communities and communities of color
  • Works to resolve nuanced legal questions and provide reentry resources for issues such as voting rights, registration laws, employment, and housing
Youth Advocacy Project
  • Coordinates students to support juveniles who are or were incarcerated at Contra Costa County’s juvenile hall, as well as their public defenders
  • Facilitates students’ one-on-one work to prepare clients for release and help connect them with community resources
  • Aids juveniles in navigating education rights, reentry planning, probation violations, and other challenges they face during and after custody

Winning Playbook for Abolishing Harmful Juvenile Fees

Y

outh and families in five states will no longer be crushed by debt from the juvenile legal system, thanks to the expertise and initiative of Berkeley Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic (PAC).

Driving the movement to abolish fees charged to children and their parents for myriad administrative costs, PAC led the policy charge to eliminate such fees in California — the first state to do so, in 2017. Next came Nevada, where two clinic students initiated a successful push to eliminate fees in 2019.

This year, clinic staff and students supported successful abolition campaigns in five more states — Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oregon, and Texas — that will no longer charge fees to youth in the juvenile system or their families. PAC has been directly involved in seven of the 10 states that reduced or eliminated juvenile fees since 2017.

“To make this kind of progress on such a deeply rooted problem has been tremendously gratifying, especially during these challenging times,” says Deputy Director Stephanie Campos-Bui ’14.

Juvenile courts often charge youth and families thousands of dollars for detention, supervision, electronic monitoring, drug testing, and “free” public defenders. PAC’s extensive research shows that the fees disproportionately harm low-income families and families of color — pushing them into debt and deeper into the juvenile system — and that local governments often spend more money chasing families to pay than they collect.

Group of people gathering
ON THE DOTTED LINE: After two years of work, Policy Advocacy Clinic alumni Marcos Mocine-McQueen ’21 (holding son) and Emma Atuire ’21 (in yellow) stand behind Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who signs a law on July 6 eliminating juvenile system fees in his state. Photo by Danny McCarthy
“Juvenile fees are a modern-day form of racialized wealth extraction with origins in the Black Codes and convict leasing,” says clinic Director Jeffrey Selbin.

The clinic’s winning playbook for abolishing fees focuses on partnering with local youth justice organizations; researching and analyzing state laws, practices, and impacts; consulting with probation officers, public defenders, and judges; and testifying before state legislatures.

Faculty supervise dozens of Berkeley law and public policy students in this effort. In addition to working on implementation in states that just passed bills, these students will support fee repeal initiatives in 15 states as PAC prepares to co-launch a national Campaign for Debt Free Justice this fall.

“This spate of historic reforms over just the last few months brings us a big step closer to the tipping point after which states that still authorize these harmful practices will be the exception and not the norm,” says Deputy Director Devan Shea.

PAC has also made an impact in the adult system, supporting a coalition that successfully advocated for a bill to repeal 23 fees in California and end the collection of $15.9 billion in outstanding debt — the first of its kind nationwide. The clinic is working to eradicate the remaining 63 adult fees and discharge billions of dollars more.

Selbin says, “It’s been a privilege to contribute to the larger movement to dismantle systems of racial and economic oppression while making a tangible difference in the lives of so many youth and families.” —Sarah Weld

Reshaping the Classroom Narrative on Domestic Violence

W

hen Nancy Lemon attended Berkeley Law from 1977 to 1980, there was no course on domestic violence. No casebook. No pro bono or clinical work.

“There was no discussion of domestic violence — no student groups, no guest speakers, nothing. It just didn’t exist on our radar at all,” she says. “So when I got a job working in the field, everything was totally new. I was learning on the job.”

At the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, Lemon found powerful mentors, including Eva Paterson ’75 and Pauline Gee. It was still a relatively new idea that police and prosecutors had a role in punishing abusers and protecting victims from further harm, and the process of representing survivors included help navigating the system.

In 1988, Lemon got a surprising call from her alma mater, asking her to teach its first domestic violence course. She agreed — and for more than 30 years has not just taught that course but also dramatically expanded Berkeley Law’s offerings.

The lack of a casebook meant she had to write one. The dearth of hands-on opportunities prompted her to organize them. The Domestic Law Violence Practicum, which Lemon directs, now places students with more than two dozen organizations, including the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office Domestic Violence Unit, the Family Violence Law Center in Oakland, and the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant.

Amy Reavis ’22, who took Lemon’s classes as a 2L, relished exploring and critiquing the anti-violence movement’s history, meeting practitioners, and working directly with survivors.

Portrait of Nancy Lemon
HER OWN TRAIL: A leading authority on domestic violence law for four decades, faculty member Nancy Lemon ’80 has pioneered its study in law schools and authored the leading textbook on the subject. Photo by Darius Riley
“Professor Lemon is a founding mother of the field of domestic violence law. Her kindness, humanity, experience, and growth-mindset all make for a great classroom environment,” Reavis says. “Her connections and expertise in this field are unparalleled and create a great learning and networking experience.”

Lemon’s work with students even extended to founding a nonprofit organization (the Family Violence Appellate Project, where she is the legal director) with some of her pupils.

Plenty has changed since 1980, particularly the students’ familiarity with the topic.

“Now they’re asking much more sophisticated questions and writing much more sophisticated papers,” Lemon says. “And from what they’re telling me, other teachers have also started to include domestic violence discussions in their classes, including Constitutional Law and Torts.

“You could talk about this in almost any class, but that’s not the way it used to be.”

Lemon finds teaching enormously gratifying, especially when students say her class was their favorite in law school.

“Many tell me they didn’t think there was a place for them in the legal system before that,” she says. “And then they came away from it with a sense of meaning and belonging, a sense that this was what they wanted to do in the world.

“I’m really happy when people say ‘I’ve found my calling.’ That’s a key part of why I’m here.” —Gwyneth K. Shaw

Student Initiatives Target Criminal Justice

Berkeley Law’s Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects develop lawyering and leadership skills while serving the community. Founded by Berkeley Law students and open to all of them, these projects involve direct client service, legal research, educational outreach, and community organizing.

Students help close the justice gap, gain practice skills, alleviate burdens, and receive valuable training, supervision, and mentoring. Several initiatives focus squarely on criminal justice issues:

Contra Costa Reentry Project
  • Helps the Contra Costa County Office of the Public Defender Clean Slate practice by working to remove barriers a prior conviction can present to employment, housing, public benefits, and family reunification
  • Enables students to research eligibility for reclassification or record clearance, and to draft expungement applications and petitions
  • Assists in providing legal services at community outreach events and Clean Slate workshops
DA Accountability and Participatory Defense Project
  • Works on projects to support Oakland’s Urban Peace Movement, which builds youth leadership in Oakland to combat community violence and mass incarceration in communities of color
  • Prepares family members from the participatory defense hub to present statements about their incarcerated loved ones
  • Writes reports, compiles data, conducts legal research and writing about local criminal policies, and prepares educational materials
Post-Conviction Advocacy Project
  • Trains students to assist incarcerated people in California with the parole process
  • Pairs law students with individuals serving life sentences to help get them ready for and represent them at their parole hearing under supervision from attorneys at UnCommon Law
  • Ensures that indigent prisoners, who regularly receive inadequate representation from board-appointed attorneys, are well prepared for and supported at their hearings
Prisoner Advocacy Network
  • Supports people incarcerated in California state prisons with severe unmet needs, including those in solitary confinement, security housing units, administrative segregation, and gender-based segregation
  • Provides nonlitigation advocacy for those experiencing discrimination, retaliation, medical needs, and civil rights violations
  • Works with activists and jailhouse lawyers who are advocating for their rights from the inside
Reentry Advocacy Project
  • Coordinates with Root & Rebound, an Oakland nonprofit founded by Berkeley Law alumni, to provide legal information to individuals reentering society from prison
  • Offers public education, direct legal services, and policy advocacy to low-income communities and communities of color
  • Works to resolve nuanced legal questions and provide reentry resources for issues such as voting rights, registration laws, employment, and housing
Youth Advocacy Project
  • Coordinates students to support juveniles who are or were incarcerated at Contra Costa County’s juvenile hall, as well as their public defenders
  • Facilitates students’ one-on-one work to prepare clients for release and help connect them with community resources
  • Aids juveniles in navigating education rights, reentry planning, probation violations, and other challenges they face during and after custody