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Abstract: 

As Executive Director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, Chicago, Illinois, Alan Mills has litigated civil rights cases on behalf of people in Illinois prisons since 1980. During that time, he has represented prisoner-plaintiffs in almost a dozen class action lawsuits, resulting in numerous consent decrees, along with dozens of individual damages cases. In this article, Mills concedes that “I thought I understood mass incarceration as well as anyone. I was wrong.” After winning a judgment against Illinois for the unconstitutionally inadequate conditions of the seriously mentally ill in the state’s prisons, Mills was sued by an inmate covered under the class action suit, for “not doing his job representing the members of the class”—a charge that, having seen how little improvement was actually brought about by the suit, Mills reluctantly concludes was justified.

Keywords: Rasho v. Jeffreys

Affiliations:  1: Uptown People’s Law Center.