American Style Justice Part 2

My new intern is getting depressed working here. Everyday she goes through the many letters we receive from prisoners and tries to figure out what to do with them. Usually, no matter what they want, we just send them back a form letter telling them that we don't have any attorneys on staff and can't help them. Some people are looking for our prisoner resource guide but the project has moved to New York, so we can't even send them that. She has to send them a letter telling them to send another request to New York. They waited months to get a letter telling them to send more letters.

But she doesn't even know the worst part, which is that New York will only send them the resource guide if they have some available, which often they don't. They don't have funding for the project all the time, its contingent upon grants and guess what? There aren't a lot of funds available to support prisoners (shocker!). This was the fun convo we had today:

Intern: Which of the prisoner letters am I supposed to respond to directly?

Me: What do you mean?

I: Some of them write and want the resource guide but others are asking specific legal questions and I shouldn't send them the form letter, right?

M: No, you should. You're not a lawyer or a law student so you can't answer their questions or do research for them. The resource guide will tell them how to write their appeal themselves.

I: But some of them write really detailed, six page letters talking about how they were mistreated and the terrible things that happened to them. A lot of them are fathers and want to see their kids, one guy sent a picture of his family (holds up heart breaking picture).

M: Yeah

I: So for the one's who write a really long letter, I want to write them back, ok?

M: Sure, you can spend 10 minutes on each letter (I feel like a major bastard as I say this). The thing is, we're not a licensed referral agency so we can't give them the names of attorneys and most attorney's don't want prisoners to contact them.

I: Why?

M: Because they they share attorney's addresses with their friends and then they get inundated

I: Right, right. I mean most of them can't afford to hire an attorney anyway, they can't even pay the $10 for our resource guide (Looks like she may cry).

M: (Laughing uncomfortably) I know, its terrible. I'm really sorry.

And the whole time I'm thinking: Aren't you glad to decided to work here for free!