00:00

JH Before you do that actually..? Um…

00:02

AS Oh, sure, hold on one sec. ((recording skips ahead)) -cording. And then, I'm going to read our confidentiality statement.

00:10

AS So, I wanna start by explaining how we plan to use the conversation we're about to have. Our conversation is not legally privileged, and we will not keep what you say confidential. We plan to make transcripts and recordings of our interviews avai-available for use by future researchers and the general public. And portions may be posted online or discussed in posts on our website or other published writing. I want our conversation to flow freely, and I realized that you may discuss a sensitive topic or mention a piece of information that you later realize you'd like withheld. If you request it now, at the end of the interview, or later on after further reflection, we're happy for you to review the transcript of our conversation before it's made public and to redact any portions you deem necessary from the transcript and the recording.

00:53

AS All right. Well, thank you so much for hopping on with me. I know that you recently started at the Prison Law Office. So why don't we start out with just a little bit about who you are, a brief biographical sort of professional bio, and just tell me how you got to this work?

01:16

JH Sure. You can hear me okay?

01:19

AS Yeah, you're good.

02:41

AS Great. Were you interested in prisoners rights work, decarceration work before the pandemic? Is this sort of what you had always hoped to go into? Or, did the pandemic sort of shift your your thinking around that?

02:52

JH It was work I was planning on doing before the pandemic. I think I thought most specifically about doing prisoners’ rights work when I started clerking, actually; it wasn't something I was thinking of doing when I was in law school. It came actually from clerking and seeing the experiences of people in the judicial system.

04:38

AS Yeah. And was that mostly at the district court or the appellate level that you sort of were, that the (dockets were)?

04:43

JH More at the district court level. Prison work seemed to implicate intersections of a whole bunch of different things that I've cared about. Prison just combines all the worst things in the world and brings them together in one place. So that was sort of what drew me to it.

05:38

AS Yeah, that all makes sense. Those are my same motivations. So when you started at PLO, you were put on Armstrong, and Chavez. And, so what-maybe you can tell me a little bit about those cases for the record? I mean, I sort of know that Armstrong is a disability conditions case, Chavez maybe solitary and other conditions. Maybe you can tell me where those are right now in the litigation, and then how that has changed with the pandemic, so sort of: has COVID come into play at all? And how has it changed your personal experience of working on those cases?

06:17

JH Yeah, I'll start by saying that with Chavez, I, you know, I don't really have a ton to offer. I'm still you know, I'm very new to the office generally. But I've, my focus has been almost completely on Armstrong-

06:34

AS Okay, that’s fine.

06:34

JH -and then a few individual habeas cases that I've been working on as well. Both of those two things more so than my Chavez work so far.

06:42

AS Great, let’s talk about that then.

06:45

JH So it's basically-it's mostly been Armstrong. And because my work on Armstrong started six months into the pandemic, I got here with I think a really different sense of what Armstrong looks like, compared to what most people think of Armstrong being like, generally, and I'm still gonna see what it's like-what Armstrong is normally like, after the pandemic. But it's been interesting to be doing an ADA case for incarcerated people only under COVID.

07:28

AS Right.

07:29

JH And see sort of, what it is we can do and how we're limited and how the fact that we already have another case, Plata, that focuses, more specifically on medical care, sort of what relief we can get for our clients within Armstrong that might, you know- how that meshes with what counsel in Plata are able to do. There are different judges. And, you know, they're-they're both cases with very long pedigrees. But, there are limitations because everything that we do is tied to the ADA, to the Armstrong remedial plan. So in that sense, we're limited as to COVID specifically. The underlying question for our team is: how is this pandemic hitting people with disabilities harder than anybody else?

8:28

JH We've started these sort of subject specific working groups within Armstrong. So I've been working, especially, on issues for blind and low vision people who were incarcerated and who are Armstrong class members. And there's one example that I can think of, in particular, where the issue itself is not totally COVID-related, but it's become exacerbated because of the pandemic. One of the issues that I work on is, helping ensure that when blind and low vision people get moved around, like from one bed to another, or from a different housing unit to another or from a different prison to another, that they know how to get around when they get to their new housing unit. Simple stuff, just like getting transferred from A Yard to B Yard and not knowing where the toilet is when you get to B Yard because nobody came to tell you and orient you to where it is.

09:48

JH Which is a problem that obviously predates COVID. That's something that would happen whether or not COVID were around, but because of how many moves have been happening with isolation and quarantine housing during the pandemic, and because there just haven't really been anywhere near the number of releases of people, by the prison system under COVID, as there should have been, there's just tons and tons of people who are getting moved around within the prison system all the time. And, if there's some sort of disability that they have, that prevents them in some way from understanding or seeing how to get around their new unit, it's a problem that just sort of takes on a whole new life when isolation and quarantine-driven movements are happening constantly.

10:36

JH We’d be getting a letter from somebody that would say, when I got to this new housing unit on E Yard, in X Prison, I was not using the bathroom, I wasn't drinking water for two days, because if I had to pee in the middle of the night, I wouldn't know how to walk to the common toilet and avoid bumping into somebody who might be aggravated that in the middle of the night, I bumped into their bed, because I was trying to get to the bathroom. And the person writing to us may have been someone who was just temporarily transferred to an isolation unit for 14 days after having tested positive, or, you know, being put on quarantine, because they may have had an exposure to somebody who tested positive.

12:10

JH So, in that sense, it's kind of been like some of the issues that I've found myself working on are not necessarily COVID specific. It's just that they've taken on this magnitude that I don't think they had beforehand.

12:22

AS Yeah. And is that-are those-is-is the sort of exacerbation by COVID of these issues coming into the br- you all are briefing an injunction right now, I think in Armstrong, I saw. Is that right?

12:37

JH There's litigation happening on staff misconduct within Armstrong right now. But any kind of back and forth negotiation and advocacy that we are doing with CDCR is tethered to the Armstrong Remedial Plan.

13:13

JH And if there are situations in which we believe CDCR is not complying with the ARP, then we can go to the court, file a motion to enforce a particular provision of the ARP.

13:29

AS Got it. Got it. And do you think, you know, I think some folks, we've spoken to have found that COVID has created an opening for things like, you know, mass decarceration, but in the area of specific conditions or a specific treatment of specific folks who are incarcerated, do you think- I mean, you know, on one hand, we've seen that we haven't been able to take advantage of those with this sort of window that's been presented to us as sort of an opportunity for mass decarceration, right, but there are people who are hopeful and people who have tried. And so I wonder if on this other side, you know, with respect to specific conditions on the inside, if you think there's more room to push back, more room to get enforcement, because of the urgency and scope of COVID and everything that it touches.

…

JH: I've been spending a lot of time dealing with accessible quarantine housing for individuals who use wheelchairs. But that’s the barest harm mitigation. Because for many people, their fate was sealed once the prison system decided not to do widespread releases. So we’re left with trying to put COVID-related fires out. Given how emergent the situation is, there isn’t as much time to focus on longer term, durable remedies—like, for example, a permanent system for orienting blind and low-vision people to new living environments.

17:49

AS Absolutely. Yeah, that- that's a good segue into the next next question about correctional and judicial responses to the pandemic. And what's been surprising, distressing, impressive, if anything to you about those two kinds of responses.You know, prison staff. I don't know how much of a window you have into, sort of everyday decisions that are being made, but it sounds like you do. So yeah. If you could just talk about what's made a mark on you.

18:39

JH Got it. Okay.

18:40

AS Anything about what you've seen and how people have responded both on the correctional side and the judicial side.

18:47

JH Hm.

19:12

JH So, this is not about a particular judge or a particular case. But during the pandemic, I’ve been thinking about the fact that there are a small handful of judges who have, without too much creativity or outside the box thinking, found that the law requires that certain people be released from prison when there's a pandemic raging through prisons. So when other judges express deep remorse at their judicial inability to find a source of law to save people from dying, it’s a bit harder to believe them.

23:15

JH As to correctional responses, I think I’ve been struck by how futile the efforts of well-intentioned custody staff are bound to be when the prisons are overcrowded, staff widely refuse to get vaccinated, the prison refuses to impose a vaccination mandate, etc. So I think, you know, maybe I've just sort of been disillusioned and sort of feel like any of these responses, even on the very, very individual level of people who really do seem to care about our clients, how totally futile their efforts are going to be because of decisions that were made by people above their pay grade.

23:44

AS Yeah. You know, you mentioned vaccinations, and you're not the first person to say that they're- that by and large, you know, folks are seeing that correctional staff are refusing to be vaccinated and sort of how that happens to fall along political lines, but that I've also heard that that maybe doesn't translate in the way that we would think to folks who are incarcerated, and what do- what's been your sense of, you know, are people generally really hoping to be vaccinated who are incarcerated versus correctional staff? or what have you seen?

24:32

JH – In the few conversations that I’ve had with unvaccinated clients where we talk about the vaccines, I’ve found that it’s hard not to sound like just another person of authority trying to convince them what they should do with their body. Yeah, you've been experiencing the prison abusing you, disregarding your needs, not taking you seriously, you know, but trust me over the phone, this class action lawyer you've never met before. I mean, I don't know if I would trust ‘me’ in that situation.

And it's also a challenge for us to make it really clear to our clients that we are not part of the prison system. We have a lot of communication with CDCR. And we meet with them regularly, and we do negotiate with them, and we help them devise policies that we think are going to make our clients’ lives better, but we aren't affiliated with them in any way. And there are people who get frustrated with us and with how ineffective they perceive our efforts to be. And so in that sense, there are people who reasonably think: Why should I trust PLO? PLO was supposed to be the ones who could have helped me get out of here, they didn't help me get out of here, I'm still here. I haven't seen anything get better with COVID, people are dying all around me. So, you know, maybe I don't trust what this lawyer is saying. No one has said these things to me explicitly, but I imagine there are situations where we don't seem as trustworthy as maybe we'd like to think we are.

28:24

AS Yeah, no, that's, that's all important. And I mean, don't worry about repeating things that you think we might have heard before. Because I think, you know, just hearing… I think it really drives home, just how much experiences of different folks all over advocating for people on the inside overlap. So.

28:44

AS Yeah, I mean, we've talked a little bit, and just now you shared a little bit about sort of, a general sense that there hasn't been any relief, and that, you know, folks are feeling like they're not seeing any changes. COVID is still a huge threat. I guess. So we're in March. It's been a year now. You know, since the start, the pandemic broke out, and the first prison cases were recorded. Since you joined PLO, what have you seen change at all about, either, you know, numbers of folks who are testing positive and then dying or just general sentiment from clients that you're speaking to about sort of the level of danger, the level of preparedness that they sense from correctional staff, what do- do you have anything to say on that?

29:42

AS I guess I'll add too, you know, on the outside, I think, there maybe has been a slight shift as number of vaccinations have increased and sort of, states open back up and, you know, incarcerated people don't have the luxury of even seeing those- that- that marginal shift that we are seeing, right? So I guess I'll just maybe you can use that as a point of comparison.

30:09

JH Mhm. Yeah. I mean, you know, the, the vaccination numbers are looking really positive among our clients. Inside, there's a lot of people who have accepted the vaccine, and the COVID-positive numbers are just way, way down. So, you know, things in the last several weeks, especially last couple months, have pretty dramatically changed in terms of whether it feels like there are active, massive outbreaks that are taking precedent over everything else the office does. To my knowledge there are no massive outbreaks right now and the numbers are extremely low. And, of course, some of that's because of vaccinations, but it’s also because of natural immunity, given how many people got COVID.

31:16

AS Right.

31:17

JH So we're obviously thrilled that people are getting vaccinated, and, you know, people are not dying at rates they were just a couple of months ago. Just trying to ensure that the next time this happens, because I guess there's just as good of a chance that will, as it won't, that they are more prepared. Next time. I mean, that sounds so horrible, but-

but there's still just so many systems that we have tried to have them put in place to make sure that the responses are like, structured and equitable and don't inappropriately disadvantage people with disabilities on my case, for example, where things are still just happening ad hoc.

Another thing, to your question, is that it would be sort of silly to deny that there are some problems that are going to affect somebody's life in greater ways than others. Some things just are more urgent than others. That's a fact. At the same time, there are some things that at the beginning of this pandemic may have been on the sort of less urgent side, that after six months, nine months, a full year of that initially, relatively minor thing not having been addressed, just the accumulation of time ends up making it a really, really big deal. Someone having their eyeglasses order delayed a few days is not good, but standing alone it usually won’t be cause for urgent advocacy from our office. But if somebody doesn't have their glasses for nine months, the chances of them tripping over and falling and getting seriously injured become high. So there's some things that have now because of backlogs because people aren't going off for their specialty appointments because of COVID closures. There's just so many different types of disability that are not being accommodated. And that began perhaps as not the most absolute urgent thing in the world that, just by the sheer passage of time, have become extremely serious.

…

So the urgent stuff is all obviously, like, it's still happening, but the stuff that is deemed less urgent, is getting delayed, and then it's sort of snowballing into more urgent stuff.

36:51

AS Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. Um, earlier, you mentioned that, you know, obviously, you can't have in person visits with clients, face to face visits with clients. So most of your communication with them is over the phone. Can you just say a bit more, if you have anything to say about the effect of the pandemic on communication with clients, generally? I mean, I- I heard a little bit about sort of your feelings that maybe folks are distrusting of how little progress they've seen in their specific conditions and with respect to COVID, and how that might play into communication with clients. But if you have anything else to say on that?

…

JH: I think the pandemic is probably going to make us a little bit more cautious about going into prisons when we don't feel like we need to, and we'll probably still be conducting some of this stuff, by phone or by zoom, or some other video format, you know, with our clients in the future even after we've been vaccinated. But, yeah, you know, it's- just seeing somebody from the neck up doesn't really cut it on a video screen, to- you know, just talk through really serious and traumatic stuff. So, yeah. It's definitely been hard. I mean, for a lot of my colleagues, they at least have relationships with some people so when they speak to a person on the phone, that person they're speaking to remembers them from several years back, or last year, or a couple months ago, before the pandemic started. And for me, they don't have that.

40:20

AS Yeah. Yeah. And- and what is it about? I mean, I can guess, but what is it about the phone that I mean, you mentioned you're kind of- you're walking through really traumatic, difficult things with clients, especially I imagine, as they relate to COVID, and its literal death threat, you know, inside prisons, and I, I can see how that's just hard to do over the phone, when you don't have a relationship going back a few years or a few months with someone is that pretty much how you're feeling about about phone calls?

40:57

JH Yeah.

(0.5)

41:02

JH Yeah, there are certain things, you know, just little nuances, you know, nothing that you can think of just sort of imagining what it's like. But if there's a long pause over the phone, the person who isn’t initiating the pause is wondering what that person on the other end of the line is doing. You want like everything you can get in the communication relationship with your client, body language included. And phone just doesn't do that.

42:04

AS Yeah, I hear that. You know, we sort of have this general question about how the pandemic and maybe for you just this new role that you're in, at PLO has changed your thinking about what it means to be a lawyer, what it means to be an advocate, where the intersection of those two things lies. If you have any thoughts on how that's changed.

42:37

JH Oh, man, I wish I had anything not bleak to say.

(0.15)

42:52

AS I- I think bleak is valuable, for ( ), sometimes.

((JH laughs))

42:57

AS So, especially like these, you know. ((She shrugs))

43:00

JH Yeah. Yeah.

43:44

JH I have to think that the fact that, you know, at- at least now, things are looking more up than they were before, that there's been, you know, an uptick in vaccinations, and a significant decline in people testing positive and no deaths recently. And it’s possible that the prison’s quickness to get people vaccines came from public pressure, or at least the scrutiny that followed the San Quentin outbreak.

In terms of my role as a lawyer, I know that I don’t think about success just in terms of whether or not a judge who was appointed by a particular president and approached a case with ideological precommitments decided to grant relief. Of course being an incisive, thoughtful advocate matters, but—without being too cynical—we know that our best efforts are largely constrained by the politics of the person hearing our case.

44:40

JH To get out of the cynicism, I often just try to think, you know, counterfactually, about what it would have been like if X or Y or Z advocacy effort wouldn't have been present. So, like, for every time that I feel like our advocacy efforts are going nowhere with a judge or with the intransigent CDCR, I just try to think about what it would be like if none of our advocacy-borne pressure were happening. If there weren't lawyers writing demand letters every single day and speaking to our clients and conveying what they're saying to, you know, to CDCR, to just tell them that someone's watching them. I believe it makes some difference. It can be pretty deflating to think about it by like, raw victories and tallying them up on a chart, but just thinking about what it would have looked like if we weren't here, not just us, but you know, organizers, lawyers, other advocates, people in law school clinics, organizing and collecting data, like you guys are doing. I mean, you know, just sort of all of it what it would look like, if that weren't happening. That's my attempt at optimism.

46:02

AS Yeah, I mean, I- I think there's definitely value in keeping the pressure on whether that's in some formal capacity as an attorney or not.

46:11

JH Yeah.

46:16

I ((She sighs)) Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, you know, we- we’re also asking folks personally, how they're doing, and, you know, what the experience has been like, for you, you started a new job during the pandemic, and then have sort of had to onboard on these incredibly complex and, you know, long lasting cases, you know, during- during this unprecedented crisis. And so, how are you doing? And do you want to speak at all to your own personal experience?

46:46

JH I'm fine. I'm good. Starting this job and being exposed in a much more immediate, visceral way, to the horrors that people inside are facing—it does make me even more aware of the pleasures in life that I am free to enjoy—friends, community, going outside to take a hike, whatever. So I'm as good as you know, somebody could be doing right now under this pandemic, I'm fine. Thank you for asking.

47:35

…

50:25

AS I- I hear you. Any thoughts about how to keep the pressure on to decarcerate? I mean, any thoughts about sort of where this leaves us in terms of efforts to decarcerate, reasons to decarcerate? And generally, I mean, I know you're doing habeas work, I'm not sure if that intersected at all with, you know, if they were habeas claims based on COVID. But just any thoughts about that generally.

50:54

JH Hm. Right now I’m think about this piece by Jules Lobel about the role of a lawyer as a narrator. Just being able to state things for the public record, almost like a journalist. And, you know, making sure that something doesn't go unsaid. The idea that a lawyer is not just somebody who's supposed to file a claim and get specific relief for a person, for a particular case. Less of an individual or even class-centered mode of advocacy, which is I think what we're trained to do as technicians of the law, but doing more work as, essentially, reporters—using our access, as lawyers, to report for the world and for movements, what it is that's happening inside. And I mean, that is one of the reasons that I was interested in this work is that I think, whereas in so many other fields, you don't need to be a lawyer to be a reporter of what's happening in a particular context or subject matter, prisons may be an exception. If you're not a lawyer, it's difficult to get access to these places. And the type of access that lawyers have, at least in California, because of, like I said, these consent decrees that our office has, we're able to kind of get inside and see what is happening in a way that by design, other people are not able to do.

The best lawyers in the country have been filing these cases throughout the pandemic, to try to get people out, and for the most part they've been losing. So if the success of a lawyer, or an evaluation of their quality as a lawyer, is based on how many release orders they get, then lawyers suck, basically. But I don't think those are the only—or even the main—metrics that we should be using to evaluate how well public advocates are doing. Apart from just filing cases and winning for their clients, they can be, with their clients’ permission and support, getting their stories out and being reporters, in a broad sense of the word. To be making their cases in the public record in the hope that those stories and the amazing examples of resilience are then going to inspire the organizing work, which is where any durable victory for any effort in social change is going to come from. It won’t come from the lawyers. … so my admittedly inexperienced view of what we can all be doing differently is just sort of being conscientious reporters as much as actual legal advocates.

57:58

AS Thanks so much, Jacob. Really nice to meet you.

58:00

JH You too.

58:01

AS Thank you for doing this work.