AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PORTIA PROJECT
The Portia Project, a charitable organization that is based in Eugene, Oregon, was founded in 2002 for the purpose of providing legal and other assistance to the 1,000-plus women who are incarcerated at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility (CCCF) in Wilsonville, Oregon, and to the large number of women who are under post-prison supervision throughout the state. The goals of The Portia Project include helping incarcerated and formerly incarcerated mothers maintain contact with their children, working for the release of imprisoned women who were wrongfully convicted or have convincingly demonstrated that they have earned their freedom, and educating both our elected representatives and members of the general public about the intended and unintended consequences of the rapid growth of our prison population.
Among the members of the Board of Directors of The Portia Project are the Dean of the University of Oregon School of Law, three law professors, several attorneys, an investment adviser, a corporate consultant, a probation officer, an ex-offender, and the daughter of an incarcerated woman. Professor Barbara Aldave, the Loran L. Stewart Professor of Business Law at the University of Oregon, is the current President of The Portia Project. Katina Saint Marie, an attorney specializing in family law, is the organization’s full-time Executive Director and General Counsel.
Under the auspices of The Portia Project, Ms. Saint Marie regularly offers classes at CCCF for women who wish to represent themselves in divorce proceedings. In addition, Ms. Saint Marie provides individual legal counseling to many of these women, a large percentage of whom are seeking to maintain or reestablish contact, or to obtain parenting time, with their sons and daughters. With the blessing of CCCF’s administrators and the Oregon Department of Human Services, Ms. Saint Marie also represents virtually all of our state’s pregnant prisoners, some twenty to twenty-five women per year, who wish to establish guardianships or make other appropriate provisions for the infants they soon will bring into the world.
Ms. Saint Marie has been leveraging her own efforts by enlisting the help of volunteers, many of whom are law students enrolled in the seminar/clinic entitled “Women in Prison,” which she and Professor Aldave co-teach at the University of Oregon each fall. Some of these student volunteers also assist Professor Aldave in the ongoing representation of a CCCF inmate who is seeking a commutation of her sentence of life imprisonment for her alleged involvement in a crime that was committed in Iowa nearly three decades ago. In 2006, after extended litigation, the Iowa Board of Parole finally granted the woman a hearing, at which the Iowa Department of Corrections recommended that her sentence be commuted to a term of years, so that the process leading to her release could begin. Unfortunately, however, the then-Governor of Iowa denied the critically important commutation. Professor Aldave continues to believe that the incarcerated woman is being deprived of rights guaranteed her by the United States Constitution, and has launched a new effort to secure her freedom.
To learn more about The Portia Project and its work, please look through our entire website. Better yet, come join us at our annual conference – free and open to the public – to be held at the University of Oregon School of Law on November 11 and 12, 2010.