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Legal resources for people in prison in Ohio

The Ohio Justice & Policy Center

341 South 3rd St

Suite 11

Columbus, OH 43215

http://www.ohiojpc.org

(513) 562-3200 (Fax)

(513) 421-1108 (Main)


Serves: OH


Focus area/description: The Ohio Justice & Policy Center (OJPC) is a nonprofit public-interest law firm. It was founded in 1997 as the Prison Reform Advocacy Center, to protect the rights and dignity of incarcerated people. In 2004, OJPC began its Second Chance Project to address the re-entry legal needs of people with criminal records in the community. That project includes free individualized legal assistance and free community education workshops for people with criminal records. In 2006, as its mission expanded, the organization was renamed the Ohio Justice & Policy Center (OJPC). OJPC has a history of using individual representation, impact litigation, research, policy advocacy, and other cross-sector strategies to make criminal justice systems fairer and more effective.

OJPC achieves its mission through its work in three areas:

1) Expand the freedom of people with criminal records to participate fully in the community through Second Chance Legal. All of our legal services are focused on removing criminal-records-based barriers. In response to new laws in Ohio, we expanded our work to include targeted assistance for victims of human trafficking with criminal records and to educating employers about CQEs.

2) Safely reduce the size and racial disparity of the prison population through research, legislative/policy advocacy, and litigation/legal representation to directly attack Ohio’s prison overcrowding crisis. We promote evidence-based strategies that enhance public safety.

3) Represent individuals who have served significant portions of their sentences and can demonstrate rehabilitation within the prison walls and how have skills and support systems on the outside to continue the process of rehabilitation upon their release.

4) Protect the human rights and dignity of incarcerated people. Here, we provide our individual and class-action litigation to protect incarcerated people, limit the use of the death penalty, and litigation on voting rights for incarcerated people.

The Ohio Justice & Policy Center confirmed this listing on July 11, 2025.


These national self-help guides may be useful to people in prison in Ohio:

The Jailhouse Lawyers Manual is a free-to-print guide to legal rights and procedures designed for people in prison. It contains nine sections designed to help incarcerated people learn about their rights, file lawsuits in both state and federal court, attack their conviction or sentence, and address the conditions of their imprisonment. It also contains information about the rights of incarcerated people related to health, safety, religious freedom, and more. We suggest accessing the online version of the manual and mailing the relevant chapters to your incarcerated loved one.

The Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook is a free resource for people in prison who want to file a federal lawsuit addressing poor conditions in prison or abuse by prison staff. This guide will not help challenge convictions or sentences or provide guidance on actions in state courts. It also has 14 appendices that provide sample complaints, legal forms, and guidance on how to reach out to journalists, among other topics. You can download relevant chapters of the handbook and mail them to your incarcerated loved one or request to have a copy mailed to them.

The Prison Book Program produces a free legal resource for incarcerated people called the Insider’s Guide to Jailhouse Law. This guide provides a comprehensive and practical overview of the legal system, and it discusses important legal developments over the last two decades. It is available for free on their website in English and Spanish. You can email the Prison Book Program if you would like them to mail your loved one the guide.

A challenge to our colleagues:

We built the internet's first always-up-to-date list of legal services for incarcerated people. Can you make a similar list for a different kind of resource?

Problem: There are too many outdated resource lists floating around.

Our Solution: Have one resource list that one organization checks each year.

Our Method: Inspired by the Cincinnati Books for Prisoners group, we made a list of every legal services organization on every resource list we could find. Then we send a letter by snail mail to each organization each year asking them to confirm/update their listing. If they respond, we include them on the site for the next 365 days. All the organization needs to do is to sign the form we send them and mail it back in the enclosed envelope. If they don't respond, we keep them on our mailing list and try again next year.

This way, any incarcerated person using the list can be assured that the organization they are writing to recently did exist and was responding to mail. And if an organization fails to respond for some reason (staff turnover, postal problems, the dog ate our letter, etc.) they get another chance next year.

It's a win for everyone. We've built a database for legal services. What list can your organization edit?



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