Justice Defenders

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Justice Defenders

Defends the defenceless. We train incarcerated people and prison staff side by side as paralegals and lawyers to serve those denied justice.

04/06/2026

What does successful re-entry look like?

For Betty Mbatudde, it meant arriving for her first day of work as a Legal Trainee at Justice Defenders Uganda.

Betty first encountered Justice Defenders while incarcerated. She studied law, served as a prison paralegal, and helped fellow prisoners navigate the justice system from within Luzira Women Prison.

Last month, she began the next chapter of that journey.

Alongside her, two more formerly incarcerated law graduates and prison paralegals, Ismail and Sowedi, joined Justice Defenders Uganda as legal trainees.

Together, they represent something larger than individual success stories.

They represent a pathway: from incarceration to legal education, from legal education to employment, and from employment to service.

For two decades, Justice Defenders has worked to create a pathway from prison into the legal profession, enabling people with lived experience of incarceration to become paralegals, law graduates, legal professionals, and leaders.

Because justice systems are stronger when those who have experienced them from the inside help shape them from within.

29/05/2026

We know our clients by name.

In prison systems where most people will never meet a lawyer, cases are often reduced to numbers and lives are left waiting.

For us, every case has a name, a story, and a path forward.

In the first three months of 2026, 8,201 people received legal support through our prison legal offices and 4,016 were released. Behind each figure is a person whose case moved forward because someone took the time to understand it, challenge it, and act on it.

Our latest dispatch shares some of those stories, including Samuel's. After more than a decade in prison and with his appeals exhausted, a Justice Defenders paralegal identified a change in the law that ultimately led to his release.

Read the January–March 2026 dispatch and meet some of the people behind the numbers.

https://www.justice-defenders.org/news/the-justice-defenders-dispatch-q1-2026

27/05/2026

Janet is free!

Charged with murder, she spent months waiting for judgment, uncertain of what would come next. Inside prison, she trained as a paralegal and began helping others with their cases before her own was resolved.

On 22 May 2026, she walked out of prison after being acquitted in court. Now, she hopes to continue using what she learned to support others.

“I want to use the knowledge I have gained to help those who are helpless. Challenges are bitter, but they are there to make us better.”

We celebrate Janet, her release, and the possibility of a future where everyone is accountable to and protected by the law.

21/05/2026

In his farewell to 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper singles out our work, bringing it to a global audience once again.

That earlier coverage shifted our trajectory. It exposed the reality of legal exclusion inside prisons and contributed to the momentum now carrying the work into New York.

We are grateful for the attention, the platform, and for Anderson’s continued support.

Inside our legal offices, the work continues to move cases forward, advancing justice for the defenceless.

Watch from 7:14:
https://youtu.be/QD0hGj-ioFU?t=434

20/05/2026

Can those who have suffered injustice become the ones who defend it?

This question sits at the heart of our work, and what we are now building in New York.

In this conversation on the Pursuing Justice podcast, Alexander McLean reflects on what happens when legal knowledge is placed in the hands of those who need it most.

Listen to Part 2: pursuingjusticepodcast.transistor.fm

11/05/2026

Alexander McLean joined the Pursuing Justice podcast to reflect on why those closest to injustice should shape justice.

Most people in the prisons where we work have never met a lawyer. Not because they don’t need one, but because they can’t access one.

The conversation explores why the root problem is not prison conditions, but access to justice itself, and the question that reframed the model: what changes when those closest to injustice are equipped to understand and use the law?

This is what that looks like.

Read more and listen: https://www.justice-defenders.org/news/why-those-closest-to-injustice-must-shape-justice

08/05/2026

Much of our work begins not with speaking, but with listening. Listening with the ear of our hearts, paying close attention to the lives, suffering, dignity, and potential of people the world too easily overlooks.

Across the prisons where we work, we encounter people who have experienced the justice system as punishment, exclusion, or abandonment. We have learned how rarely many people feel truly heard or seen.

We aspire to a world where every person accused of a crime has the opportunity to tell their side of the story before they are convicted or punished.

Accountability matters. Truth matters. Justice matters. But if justice loses sight of human dignity and the possibility of transformation, it risks becoming only condemnation.

Proximity changes us. When people are listened to with dignity that honours their inherent humanity, spaces for justice, responsibility, and transformation begin to open.

Justice Defenders exists to place the tools of justice into the hands of those closest to injustice, building communities where dignity, responsibility, and hope can still be restored.

Listening is not separate from justice. It is the beginning of it.

06/05/2026

This week at the Alpha Leadership Conference 2026, our CEO Alexander McLean was reminded of the “upside down kingdom” — a vision where those pushed furthest to the margins are brought to the centre with dignity and honour.

One of the most striking expressions of this is that people with lived experience of prison are given the place of honour, seated in the Royal Box at the Royal Albert Hall, where the King and his family usually sit.

Later, at HTB Church, a sculpture of the prodigal son captured something deeply familiar to the heart of Justice Defenders: the longing to be welcomed home.

So many people we serve have experienced rejection, violence, shame, or exclusion. Our hope is that the legal communities we build inside prisons become places where people encounter dignity, responsibility, belonging, and transformation.

Justice is not only about laws. It is also about restoring humanity.

01/05/2026

We’re pleased to share our 2025 Annual Report.

2025 marked the beginning of a new chapter, as we establish our work in the United States while continuing to deliver justice at scale across Africa.

In Kenya and Uganda, people in prison and prison staff are providing legal services from within. In New York, that same model is now taking root.

29,080 clients served across 22 legal offices
12,970 people released through the work of 233 paralegals

This is a story of proximity, and of hope rising where it is least expected.

Thank you for walking this journey with us, and for recommitting, again and again, to a mission born as a response of the heart.

Read the full report: https://www.justice-defenders.org/our-financials

29/04/2026

Today, Alexander McLean meets Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello III and the team at New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to formalise the launch of a legal education pathway inside Bedford Hills Correctional Facility and Green Haven Correctional Facility.

30 learners. People in prison and correctional staff learning side by side. A ten week Introduction to Law as the starting point. A different way of engaging with the system, from within.

This work builds on a proven model that has already supported over 180,000 cases and contributed to more than 74,000 releases globally. It is now being brought into the United States context.

This is how justice is defended and transformed. By finding, inspiring, and equipping those closest to it. By building a pipeline of legal talent from prison communities into the legal establishment. By reshaping the culture of justice as those who have experienced it most directly take part in shaping it.

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https://www.justice-defenders.org/

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