Jailed Women Find Allies in Women Lawyers

Beginning next year, you’re going to see a lot more women at the Orange County Jail.

They won’t be inmates. They’ll be lawyers.

The Orange County Women Lawyers Assn. and the Public Law Center are putting together a project that will send a flurry of lawyers to the jails here next year to provide free legal advice to women inmates.

“We won’t have anything to do with these inmates’ criminal cases, nor will we help them out on any complaints about jail conditions,” said Jean Hobart of Orange County Women Lawyers, one of the organizers. “But we can help them in any civil cases.”

Women in jail wind up with myriad legal problems besides the criminal charges that landed them there, Hobart said. For example, they risk losing custody of their children. Or they have problems related to their children’s care. Or sometimes it’s even their health needs.

Some women inmates lose their homes to spouses on the outside, said Elizabeth Dermody Leonard, a sociology professor at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, who did her doctoral dissertation on battered women behind bars.

Leonard said she knew of one woman who even lost her home to her criminal defense attorney, to cover his fees.

“Women in jail or prisons really do need an advocate,” Leonard said.

This should be the biggest boost of this kind for women inmates the county has ever seen, according to Scott Wylie, executive director of the Public Law Center.

Four years ago the federal government began to restrict the kinds of services that legal aid groups it subsidized could provide. That meant no more help for jail inmates with their civil legal problems. So the Legal Aid Society of Orange County had to begin forwarding its mail from jail inmates to the Public Law Center, a nonprofit group based in Santa Ana. The Public Law Center also handles civil cases for indigent clients, but isn’t subsidized by the government. So it was free to work in local jails.

But Wylie said it didn’t have the resources to take on a large number of legal issues for inmates.

“We had our phone number posted at the jail,” Wylie said. “But when inmates would contact us, about the best we could do for them would be to send them a letter with legal advice. Anyone knows that a letter like that isn’t nearly as effective as having a lawyer sit down with you in person for 30 minutes.”

Which is why he applauds Orange County Women Lawyers, which Wylie describes as one of the leading organizations in the county for providing free legal advice. (Lawyers call it pro bono work.)

The idea for the volunteer project came from Susan Eastman, a Public Law Center attorney also active in Orange County Women Lawyers. Some lawyers already go out of their way to help women inmates, because they are either battered spouses or victims of sexual or physical battery as children. But Hobart said in this new project, the volunteer attorneys will help any woman in jail who seeks assistance.

About 500 women are inmates in the Orange County Jail each day--just more than 300 in the main women’s jail, and just fewer than 200 at the adjacent Intake and Release Center.

The legal project is being modeled after a similar program by women lawyers in Los Angeles. In January, the Public Law Center will train those who volunteer for this special jail work. About 15 have signed up so far, but that’s without any promotion.

“I think I signed up the whole executive board,” Hobart said, meaning the board of the women lawyers group.

Any lawyers--either women or men--who think they want to volunteer can call the Public Law Center at (714) 541-1010.

The women’s group has talked with Sheriff Mike Carona’s jail staff about what they are planning. Hobart said jail officials have been highly cooperative.

Lawyers who provide some of their services for free often have a variety of motivations. For some, it helps them develop contacts. Others see it as a means of gaining experience. Some even do it to please their bosses. But Wylie believes the vast majority do it “because they’ve got a big fluffy heart.”

The Public Law Center provides about 30,000 hours of pro bono service annually to about 4,000 clients. But helping inmates, Wylie said, has never been a popular source of pro bono work. Perhaps it’s because inmates can drive you crazy telling you their problems, or they already have so many other legal entanglements.

Hobart told me of one jail-related pro bono case she currently has where she represents the mother of a woman inmate now deceased. The woman had three children by three husbands. One of the husbands is in prison, another is in jail awaiting trial. One of the three children is left in a wheelchair, the victim of a drive-by shooting. The children’s grandmother is seeking custody.

By the way, the Public Law Center has some interesting statistics on who does the most free legal work in this county. About 56% of its volunteer hours are donated by women attorneys, even though women make up less than a quarter of the number of lawyers in the county.

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Jerry Hicks’ column appears Monday and Thursday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling (714) 564-1049 or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com