Help the Prisoners

For my external credits, I did some work at a law firm for my aunt and one of her coworkers. To give some background before I explain what I did, my aunt had a case during which some of her clients missing files were found in the basement of a police station. Along with her clients files, there were hundreds of other peoples. These files contained information that was withheld from them and their attorneys during the time of their trials, and could potentially prove their innocence. After finding all these missing files, my aunt decided to contact every person whose file was found. She sent a letter to each prisoner. One of the things the letter explained was that the courts ordered her to not give any of these prisoners their files, the only way they can have access to them is if they have their own lawyers contact her. The problem with that being that the majority of these prisoners no longer have lawyers and aren't able to contact any. In response to her letter she received hundreds of responses, not only from the people she wrote to, but from other prisoners who heard what she was doing.

You've Got Mail . 11.30.15 . Web: 5.27.16

What I did for my aunt over a couple months, was went through all the letters and figured out who was writing to her and why. I summarized each letter for her, and had them in categories: who she wrote to, who she did not write to, who she wrote to about a different topic, and who she did not write to but their letter made it seem as though she had. Once we got through that bunch of letters we created 3 different generalized response letters, answering the questions many of the prisoners had, and explaining the situation. After that the work consisted mainly of folding the papers, fitting them into envelopes, stamping them, and mailing them. With some hours left to go, I returned almost two months later, to go through some new responses she received, and basically restart the process with the new letters. I learned to be more open minded from this experience, so many people had very interesting stories where they spoke of many unjust things that happened to them. It showed me that even though people assume everyone in prison did something horrible, it reminded me that that is not necessarily true for many people. I think I really made a difference with this, because I was helping people whose form of living was at stake. I was helping them with a process that could potentially free them from a hell on Earth. When I volunteer in the future I plan to keep this open-minded mentality, I think that is a very important quality to have in life and especially while doing service for others. This experience is one that I want people to know about, because it is such a crazy situation. Police are breaking laws and not enough people are paying attention, and I plan to do everything I can to educate those people, and tell them about this situation along with many others.