Legal Services for Prisoners with Children

Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC) has worked directly with prisoners, family members and former prisoners since 1978. Since our creation, we have focused on the specific legal and social policy issues affecting incarcerated mothers and their children, parents in prison, and family members caring for the children of incarcerated parents. Ours is one of the first legal organizations in the country to focus on the legal needs of women prisoners and their children.  Today, LSPC provides training, technical assistance, advocacy and litigation support to legal services offices, pro bono counsel, prisoners and their families, and advocates throughout California.  LSPC has a national reputation for expertise on legal issues affecting incarcerated parents and their children.  We shares our expertise by writing articles, making presentations, teaching classes, and leading workshops for lawyers, social workers, child welfare workers, judges, prisoners and law students.
We have built a statewide network of formerly incarcerated people and their families.  LSPC has also worked in public policy and built relationships with public officials throughout our history. 

We look at incarceration holistically, focusing on reducing the prisoner population by fighting for sentencing reform—including an end to the war on drugs and real alternatives to incarceration—working to improve conditions of confinement while people are incarcerated, and struggling for the restoration of civil and human rights upon release. 

LSPC has a strong track record of responding to the needs and desires of incarcerated women, their families and communities.  Having begun by providing direct legal services to women fighting to maintain their parental rights, we successfully filed class action lawsuits to improve conditions of confinement for incarcerated pregnant women culminating in a massive lawsuit demanding improvement in medical care for all women incarcerated in California’s state prisons.  Since 2003, we have brought our advocacy to the streets and to California’s legislature, successfully working on bills that provide access to justice for survivors of domestic violence incarcerated as a result of being abused, an end to shackling for pregnant women going to the hospital to deliver their babies, and an increase in the timeframe for incarcerated parents who want to reunify with their children.  We continue to struggle for the release of incarcerated seniors who are the most expensive to incarcerate and the least likely to commit a new crime.

Our newest project, All of Us or None, is a grassroots movement that is fighting to restore civil and human rights to people coming out of prison. All of Us or None is working to end systemic discrimination against people with felony convictions, including employment, housing, education and voting.

LSPC is proud of our work with people in prison, their families and communities, as well as our long history of mentoring students and working in local, statewide and national coalitions that are trying to end our reliance on incarceration as a way to solve deep social problems.

Honored by Adrienne Hirt