Page 12 - MarchApril26 Report

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People who
are confined
remain human
beings, and the
constitution
continues to
protect them.
OJPC’s Human Rights in
Prison Project
OJPC’s Human Rights in
Prison Project (HRIP) exists as
one of the few legal initiatives in
the Midwest dedicated exclusively
to exposing unconstitutional
conditions and challenging abuses
of power inside correctional
institutions. Each year, OJPC’s
litigation team receives a large
volume of correspondence from
incarcerated people across Ohio.
Among other things, this corre-
spondence describes excessive
force, medical neglect, retaliatory
acts of punishment, and failures
to protect people from harm.
Our legal staff rigorously exam-
ines each claim, filing lawsuits
where appropriate, because every
story reflects a basic truth: people
behind bars are among the most
vulnerable in our society, and
among the least able to secure
legal help.
This work builds on a long
history of OJPC litigating to
protect basic rights. In the early
2000s, OJPC brought landmark
class action lawsuits, like Fussell
v. Wilkinson, challenging Ohio’s
unconstitutional prison medical
care system. Fussell resulted
in a settlement that created an
independent Medical Over-
sight Committee to monitor
and improve care. The following
decade, in Serenity L. v. ODRC,
OJPC secured reforms after filing
a class action challenging the
failure of the Ohio Department
of Rehabilitation and Correc-
tion (ODRC) to provide release
planning services for people with
severe mental illness. OJPC has
also defended the religious free-
doms of incarcerated people,
including the right to kosher
meals.
In recent years, HRIP has
represented individuals like
Marcus Hill (named changed
for privacy), who was violently
assaulted by a corrections officer
during a routine patdown. Mr.
Hill alleged that the officer
12 | march/april 2026 cba report
slammed and choked him without
provocation, causing serious back
injuries and violating his Eighth
Amendment rights. OJPC’s
representation ensured not only
a favorable settlement, but also
that his story was heard in federal
court, no small feat given the
procedural barriers that often shut
people behind bars out of civil
rights litigation.
HRIP has also recently taken
on systemic issues, such as inves-
tigating solitary confinement and
separately litigating prison poli-
cies that threaten the integrity of
access to the legal system.
For example, since 2025, OJPC
has been involved with civil rights
litigation against officials at ODRC
over its implementation of a policy
instructing prison staff to screen
legal mail sent to incarcerated
people using a process ripe with
potential for abuse. Specifically,
ODRC replaced a brief process
of opening and inspecting legal
mail with an extended process
of copying and shredding legal
mail that has allowed for many
opportunities for prison staff to
read incarcerated people’s confi-
dential legal communications. As
OJPC has argued, ODRC’s policy
violates the First Amendment
rights of our currently incarcer-
ated clients. It weakens their right
to access the legal system, and
their right to petition the govern-
ment for redress of grievances.
In short, HRIP’s advocacy is
built on a straightforward but
often overlooked premise, people
who are confined remain human
beings, and the constitution
continues to protect them.
The Stakes for Us All
Expanding access to justice for
people who’ve had been involved
with the justice system starts with
building greater consensus in our
community about the stakes for
all of us.
In engaging lawmakers and
the community, OJPC anchors its
message in Martin Luther King
Jr.’s creed: “Injustice anywhere is
a threat to justice everywhere.”
Whether in legislative hearings or
school classrooms, our message
is consistent, how we treat justice
involved people shapes their
futures, and the wellbeing of the
communities they return to.
The benefits are universal.
Safeguarding the rights of the
incarcerated improves public
health, especially because re-entry
so often involves individuals who
have endured addiction, trauma,
and mental illness. It positively
affects family wellness, since chil-
dren, partners and other relatives
often shoulder the emotional
and economic burden of loved
ones being mistreated in custody.
Finally, protecting such rights
improves public safety by creating
conditions for successful rehabili-
tation, safe working environments
for law-enforcement, and post-re-
lease economic stability. Access
to justice for incarcerated people
is not just a matter of individual
fairness. It is a matter of public
interest. Strengthening the ability
of justice-involved people to
enforce their rights matters to
everyone.
Changing Existing Law
For all its promise, the law
makes it extraordinarily diffi-
cult for people in custody to test
whether their rights have been
violated. The challenges are struc-
tural, not inevitable.
Take the nation’s landmark
civil rights enforcement statute,
42 U.S.C. 1983 (Section 1983),
which was first codified in the
Civil Rights Act of 1871 with
the goal of protecting newly
freed enslaved people from state
violence in the Reconstruc-
tion Era. At its simplest, section
1983 allows a plaintiff to bring a
lawsuit against another person
for violating a federally protected
right, including a constitutional
right, when the person who
violated that right was exercising
authority granted by state or local