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The Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP) provides currently incarcerated individuals across Illinois an undergraduate education from Northwestern University. At Stateville and Logan Correctional Centers, admitted NPEP students work toward a Bachelor of Science degree, taking a full course load taught by Northwestern professors within the prisons’ walls. On November 14, 2023, the inaugural cohort of NPEP students at Stateville graduated from the program, making history as the first incarcerated students in the United States to earn a bachelor’s degree from a top ten university as ranked by U.S. News and World Report. This piece is a collection of personal reflections from currently enrolled NPEP students, who were asked to answer an open-ended prompt: “What does NPEP mean to you?” Students were encouraged to respond in any way they saw fit, and the essays included here represent various and varied takes on the simple question. Thomas Gordon, Justin Foster, and Scott Sanders reflect on the application and enrollment process of NPEP and the opportunities the program has given its students. Meanwhile, Juan Garcia and Brandon V. Wyatt write more generally about the importance and intersections of education and abolition. Bookending the collection, Tony Triplett and Giovanni Rios vividly describe NPEP as not just a program, but a lifesaving endeavor.

Properly understood, the “cruel or unusual” punishment clause of the Michigan Constitution grants every person sentenced to life in prison a meaningful right to obtain release through rehabilitation. Today, however, Michigan has among the nation’s largest populations of people serving both formal and de facto life sentences without any meaningful possibility of release. In 1850, Michigan revised its state constitution to prohibit “cruel or unusual punishment,” creating a contrast with the conjunctive “cruel and unusual punishments” clause of the federal Eighth Amendment. This disjunctive prohibition, which subsequent Michigan constitutional conventions retained, prohibits both “cruel” sentences and “unusual” sentences. We argue that under the original meaning of Michigan’s “cruel or unusual punishment” clause, life without parole sentences violate the state constitution. Admittedly, there is no direct evidence of what would have made a sentence “cruel” for the drafters of the 1850 constitution. We therefore turn to two other sources for clues—debates surrounding a different provision of the 1850 constitution and evidence of parole and commutation practices at that time. Both sources point to the same conclusion: “cruel” punishments foreclose a meaningful opportunity for future release based on rehabilitation. Consistent with this original understanding, Michigan rejected permanent punishments for well over 100 years after the 1850 convention. Michigan did not send people to prison without a chance of release. Instead, even people technically serving “life without parole” were routinely considered for and awarded release based on rehabilitation, making permanent incarceration “unusual” to the point of nonexistent. Michigan today has one of the nation’s largest populations of people serving both formal and de facto life sentences without any meaningful possibility of release. Thus, as practiced in Michigan today, life sentencing is “cruel” and “unusual”—and thus doubly unlawful under the original meaning of the “cruel or unusual punishment” clause.

In Excessive Force in Prison, Professor Sharon Dolovich tackles the shortcomings of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment doctrine to govern uses of official violence against prisoners. She argues that law enforcement officers owe a duty of care and protection to incarcerated people, but that duty of care and protection is undermined by the dehumanization and demonization of prisoners. Professor Dolovich thus advocates for shifting the doctrinal standard for excessive force under the Eighth Amendment to one based on objective reasonableness, paired with jury instructions explicitly reminding jurors of incarcerated victims’ humanity. To counteract the vagaries of such an objective reasonableness standard, she also advocates for importing necessity and self-defense concepts into the Eighth Amendment’s excessive force doctrine. In this response to Professor Dolovich’s groundbreaking article, I explicate and expand upon the importance of her analysis and suggested interventions in several ways: the importance of her observations and suggested interventions to all acts of official violence by law enforcement (whether governed by the Eighth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, Fourth Amendment, or more vague concepts of Due Process); the special intersectional danger faced by people of color and people with disabilities when it comes to official violence; and a call to policymakers to adopt her suggested interventions without waiting for courts to decide that they are constitutionally mandated.

In Excessive Force in Prison, Professor Sharon Dolovich has proposed a new standard for liability in excessive force cases brought by prisoners against prison officials, shifting the Eighth Amendment analysis from its current deference to correctional officers’ judgment to a “morally robust reasonableness standard.” While Professor Dolovich’s argument is righteous and compelling, its potential to practically impact prison litigation is lacking. This Article responds to Professor Dolovich’s recent piece from the perspective of a practitioner with decades of experience litigating prisoners’ rights cases in state and federal court. Based on this experience, this Article suggests that Professor Dolovich’s new excessive force standard is both too broad and too narrow, and it proposes an alternative approach that might better address the practical issues that have hindered litigators’ ability to try excessive force cases on behalf of prisoners.

Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, was stripped of his security clearance before documents were properly classified and without access to exculpatory evidence in what amounted to a show trial. The modern, peace-time classification system has expanded into an arguably uncontrollable leviathan that has proven unable to be curtailed by either political party despite bipartisan support. The usage of the related Espionage Act to enforce the ever-growing secrecy state has a problematic history of being utilized in politically motivated prosecutions in which defendants still face an uphill battle to gain access to exculpatory information. These prosecutions, under the procedural framework of CIPA, implicate constitutional issues such as the First Amendment and Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution, and ultimately serve to squash dissent and discourage whistleblowing and activism.

Juveniles, whose offending nature fundamentally differs from that of adults, should not be subjected to the traditional criminal justice system for drug offenses. Juvenile drug offenders warrant heightened attention due to their diminished capacity for reasoned judgment, increased susceptibility to the effects of drugs, the profound impact that criminal drug charges have on their future, and the possible presence of Substance Use Disorder. This Comment breaks down ways in which the U.S. has handled, and currently handles, juvenile drug offenders. I will also explore the long-term and short-term effects of drug convictions for juveniles, the issue of culpability and susceptibility to deterrence efforts, while placing an emphasis on the role of addiction. This Comment compares approaches taken by different U.S. jurisdictions, while also analyzing how other countries treat juvenile drug offenders, to adequately evaluate effective and appropriate intervention strategies. The analysis concludes by synthesizing the salient features of each approach in an effort to guide policy decisions surrounding the implementation of intervention strategies for juvenile drug offenders.