The Remedy Project

The mission of The Remedy Project is to recruit formerly incarcerated advocates to train college students to defend the rights of people incarcerated in the United States through the grievance process. 

From guard assault to solitary confinement to medical malpractice, the problem of abuse and neglect within American prisons is well documented. Since the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act in 1994, the grievance process has become the only way incarcerated people can seek accountability and relief for their mistreatment. However, the grievance process is largely underused, rarely used effectively, and almost always met with reprisal rather than a reprieve. Prison administrations do everything in their power to obscure the available pathways for people to defend their rights. Information about the grievance process is buried in little read manuals and program statements. Filings are often delayed or dismissed because of small, esoteric mistakes. Most egregiously, prison administrators and staff frequently retaliate against those who file grievances, along with, or in lieu of, actual relief. 

The Remedy Project’s operations are modeled after the experience and expertise that our founder, David, gained using the administrative remedy process during his 10-year incarceration in Federal Prison – with two important differences. First, because the advocacy work is done by our student advocates, it is impossible for prison officials and their staff to retaliate against those who are helping incarcerated people prepare grievances. And second, because we operate outside the prison walls, we can keep thorough records that will allow us to hold the prison administrations accountable for abuse and neglect in the long term and on a broader scale. 

Alongside David, The Remedy Project is co-directed by Anna Sugrue, a former student organizer at Barnard College who met David in a class at Columbia University. Led by David’s vision and expertise and assisted by Anna’s passion and university connections, we launched The Remedy Project in January of 2020. 

Over the past year, we finished training our first cohort of 16 student advocates and launched a pilot advocacy program within the Federal Bureau of Prisons. As of August 2021, we have 102 incarcerated people on our client list, and our students have written and filed 40 administrative remedies on behalf of 23 of them. A video is currently being developed to tell the story of one of those new clients – Adolphus Nwokedi – who had been denied home confinement by the BOP but was able to gain that status through the work of The Remedy Project.

Now that we have built a robust client list and are beginning to send out administrative remedies regularly, we plan to grow our organization and expand this vital work. Your support is crucial to us maintaining operations at current levels and growing our work to expand through the Bureau of Prisons, to the New York State prison system, and to colleges and universities across the New York City area.

At present, The Remedy Project is the only non-profit organization that is singularly focused on providing free administrative remedy support for currently incarcerated people. Through its unique combination of providing direct services and building connections between students and prison-involved communities, The Project hopes to empower future change-makers to build a world where justice is rooted not in violence, but in our common humanity. 

For more information, please visit www.theremedyproj.org