Prison Letters Project
Prison Letters Project
In April 2019, Yutico Briley wrote to the journalist Emily Bazelon from his prison cell in Louisiana. His letter became the basis for a New York Times Magazine cover story about his wrongful conviction—and his exoneration in March 2021.
Yutico, with his great-aunt Maxine Thornton, after his exoneration.
Photography Credit: Ruddy Roye
We founded the Prison Letters Project to highlight more stories like Yutico’s
Some sing of innocence, while others speak of excessive punishment or another injustice. When people write to us from prison, we ask for permission to share parts of their letters and facts about their cases.
Our aim is to amplify their voices and create a way for advocates—lawyers, journalists, and potential penpals—to learn of their experiences and offer help.
The Letters
With the permission and participation of incarcerated people who write to us, we are logging their letters into a public database.
About the Project
The project is a collaboration between John J. Lennon, a prison journalist in New York who is a contributing editor for Esquire magazine and frequently writes for the New York Times, and Emily Bazelon, a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and a lecturer at Yale Law School, and the Law and Racial Justice Center at Yale, directed by Kayla Vinson.
Our student researchers are Rachel Crowl, Gila Glattstein, Justin Lutz, Claire Stobb, and Claire Sullivan.
Information appearing in the database reflects our understanding of letter-writers' situations and legal claims based on our correspondence with them, and may not be complete and comprehensive. If you are interested in learning more about a particular person's case or connecting with them, please write us at prisonlettersproject@yale.edu
The Prison Letters website is a project of the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School.
Resources
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A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual (JLM) is a handbook of legal rights and procedures designed for use by people in prison.
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The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the Newkirk Center for Science & Society at University of California Irvine, the University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law. The Registry provides detailed information about every known exoneration in the United States since 1989—cases in which a person was wrongly convicted of a crime and later cleared of all the charges based on new evidence of innocence.
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A Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) is a division of a prosecutorial office that works to prevent, identify, and remedy false convictions. They are sometimes called Conviction Review Units (CRUs).
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The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We have an impact on the system through journalism, rendering it more fair, effective, transparent and humane.
Connect with and support the letter-writers!
The Prison Letters Project hopes for and welcomes interest from people who want to learn more about these stories.
If you would like to be connected to a particular letter-writer for the purpose of providing representation, writing about their story, offering other support, or simply learning more about their case, please reach out to us using this form.
Alternatively, you can write to us at:
Prison Letters Project, c/o Emily Bazelon, Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06511.