In her “Mercy and the Rule of Law” course, Kristen Bell, Associate Professor and Faculty Director of the Public Service and Policy Program, leads a class comprised of law students and incarcerated students in examination and dialogue around the complexities of the criminal justice system and conflicts between law and justice.
“We often teach criminal law as a course about legal rules without thinking about the complex individuals that they're going to be applied to,” said Bell. “I'm excited for students to be in dialogue with people in prison, to make connections as fellow human beings before they embark on whatever career they pursue.”
Future lawyers – including prosecutors, public defenders, and judges – are provided a more nuanced picture of individuals in the criminal justice system and insight on the complexities that have led them to prison.
Bell’s passion for teaching incarcerated youth and adults began while she was an undergraduate student and law student at Stanford University. She recalls an incarcerated student at San Quentin State Prison.
“He said, ‘I know you guys can't give us legal help to shorten our sentence, but you have shortened my sentence because every hour that I spend in here, I'm not in prison. I'm at Stanford University.’”
Bell hopes that “Mercy and the Rule of Law” will remove some of the facelessness of the incarceration system for her law students by fostering these interactions between future lawyers and people convicted of crimes, building more comprehensive understanding and a sense of humanity among those working in the law.
“There's a kind of freedom from that carceral space, from that prison, that you can create with a classroom and that's important to me.” The course is part of the University of Oregon’s Prison Education Program which facilitates students at the Oregon State Correctional Institute in earning undergraduate degree credit.
Feature Photo Credit: M.O. Stevens, Oregon State Penitentiary gate, photograph, Wikimedia Commons, October 2009, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oregon_State_Penitentiary_gate.JPG.
