Personal Representation to Ensure Justice: Lousene Hoppe, Jacob Baer, Jake Levine and Charles Urena

Lousene Hoppe

Jacob Baer

Jake Levine

Charles Urena

Fredrikson teamed up with Abolish Private Prisons, a nonprofit corporation, to file a class-action lawsuit in the federal District Court of Arizona. The purpose of the lawsuit is to end the practice of incarcerating human beings for profit. The private prison industry treats inmates like commodities, entering contracts with states like Arizona under which the corporations are often paid daily rates per prisoner incarcerated in their facilities. The industry promises to provide the things state-run facilities provide, such as effective rehabilitation and education programs, decent food service and healthcare for a lower cost. In reality, deficiencies exist in training, staffing, food quality, the availability of medical services and the other necessities to provide incarcerated persons with adequate care. The model also reduces the ability for the facility to provide needed rehabilitation to allow inmates to pursue lives outside of prison when their sentences conclude.

The Arizona suit alleges that incarcerating people for private profit violates the constitutional guarantees against slavery, cruel and unusual punishment, due process and equal protection. The suit maintains that there cannot be a profit motive to incarcerating people and holding them behind bars as it creates bias and unfairness in favor of incarceration.

Fredrikson’s clients, the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, are five men incarcerated in private facilities in Arizona. The Arizona Chapter of the NAACP is also a plaintiff. Fredrikson’s partner, Abolish Private Prisons, is a group of lawyers, professors and community advocates who learned about the abuses and inequities inherent in the prison-for-profit industry and made a commitment to act. Inspired by cases like Brown v. Board of Education, the organization plans to file other cases in federal courts across the country, hoping that at least one of the cases reaches the United States Supreme Court for a ruling that profiting off the dignity of those incarcerated after committing crimes violates the constitution. Fredrikson’s legal team includes Lousene Hoppe, Jacob Baer, Jacob Levine and Charles Urena with assistance from Aron Frakes and summer associate Emani Marshall-Loving.

“To treat human beings like chattel and to reduce them to “inventory,” no matter what wrongs they have committed in their past, is an affront to the principle of basic human dignity that underlies the bill of rights and the United States Constitution.” – Lousene Hoppe