The Prison Letters Project
The New York Times Magazine, September 2, 2022: The Prison Letters Project
“Last July, The New York Times Magazine published a cover story by Emily Bazelon about the exoneration of a prisoner named Yutico Briley. He was serving a 60-year sentence in Louisiana for an armed robbery he did not commit. The article started with a letter that Yutico sent to Bazelon from prison. As she explained in her story: ‘Like many journalists who write about criminal justice, I get a lot of mail from people in prison. The letters usually go on for pages, carefully handwritten on lined note paper, sometimes with sentences in smaller print crawling up the margins. The pages are dense with facts, about a conviction or an appeal. They often brim with desperation. It’s impossible for me to read all of them, and though I don’t feel good about it, many go unanswered.’
“Bazelon connected Briley with her sister, Lara Bazelon, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, who fought for his exoneration. Bazelon knew she would receive even more letters from people in prison when the article ran. And she did. Letters written by prisoners to journalists are often an act of last resort. Their cases have wound their way through the justice system or hit procedural walls. And after the powerful demonstration that Briley’s story provided of the prevalence of innocence claims, Bazelon decided to help create a system to ensure that every letter she received was read. So she started a project to answer them, and to amplify the voices of the writers, with the help of a group of students at Yale Law School (where she is a lecturer). The students log portions of the letters that Bazelon receives from prisoners (as well as their advocates) into a public database with the permission and participation of the people who wrote them. The database is hosted by Freedom Reads, an organization that takes libraries and literary programs to prisons, and the Law and Racial Justice Center at Yale.”
Additional reading:
NPR, July 8, 2021: An Innocent Man Walks Free From A 60-Year Sentence With Help From A Journalist
The New York Times Magazine, June 30, 2021: I Write About the Law. But Could I Really Help Free a Prisoner?
