Post-Conviction Advocacy Project

P-CAP is a student-initiated legal services project (SLP) with the primary purpose of training Berkeley Law students to assist incarcerated people with the parole process. Students will meet with their clients, prepare them for their parole board hearing through a trauma-informed process, and help represent them at that hearing.

P-CAP’s mission is to help secure the freedom of people who may spend the rest of their lives in prison. In the United States, the carceral system funnels people (the majority of whom are Black and Brown) into prison, and yet provides few opportunities for people to return home. The parole process is subjective and discretionary. Indigent incarcerated clients regularly receive inadequate representation from board-appointed attorneys. Support from P-CAP’s student volunteers helps ensure that clients are well-prepared and have a fairer chance at their hearing. Further, through P-CAP’s trauma-informed advocacy, students work alongside their clients to create space for processing and healing within the parole process.

P-CAP members prepare clients for and represent them in their hearings before the Board of Parole, advocating for their release from Prison. P-CAP teams of two or three members are each paired with a client incarcerated in a California prison. All of our clients are serving indeterminate life sentences in state prison and are eligible for release on parole because they have served their minimum sentence terms. They, like the vast majority of people in prison, experienced serious trauma prior to their incarceration and have found ways to heal and grow, in the midst of a system designed to do the opposite. Fantastic attorneys who are experienced in parole representation and advocacy train and supervise P-CAP members.

Through the eighteen-month parole preparation process, P-CAP members will get to know and build trust with their client, work with their client to develop their self-narrative, write and compile a parole packet and help their client prepare for their parole hearing. P-CAP members will strengthen their collaboration skills, both with their fellow P-CAP team members and their client. Further, P-CAP members approach the work with humility and the understanding that the client knows their story the best, and the P-CAP member’s role is to help them refine it for the specific audience of the parole board.

Additionally, P-CAP is a community for students to learn about anti-carceral advocacy; think critically about how we can work with and advocate for clients in a trauma informed, client-centered manner within the confines of the parole process and more broadly; and work to intervene in the legal system’s victim-perpetrator binary and logics of disposability.

Supervision: P-CAP students are supervised by attorneys at  UnCommon Law.

Time Commitment: Members are expected to make an 18-month commitment to P-CAP to ensure proper preparation and zealous representation at a client’s hearing. All P-CAP students will be trained and supervised by attorneys at UnCommon Law.

A 14-18 month commitment is necessary to ensure proper preparation and zealous representation at your client’s hearing. Students who join P-CAP in Fall 2025 can expect to have a hearing between October 2026-May 2027. The time commitment per semester is about 45-50 hours with variation depending on client needs (the first semester is focused on training and is a bit of a lighter time commitment). 

Other requirements include: (1) obtaining gate clearance to enter prison for monthly client visits; (2) the ability to work with one or more partners; (3) the ability to work empathetically and professionally with incarcerated individuals serving life sentences; (4) attending mandatory trainings, part of which includes observing a parole hearing; (5) driving to prisons between 45 minutes and 2.5 hours from the Berkeley campus (if you cannot drive, this does not bar you from consideration); and (6) possibly missing class to visit your client once a month. 

The programs and activities that P-CAP will run this year will be extensive. We will have 4-6 trainings for new and returning P-CAP members, where they will learn about the various aspects of the parole process, from the governing law to the ethical rules they must follow as burgeoning legal advocates. We will also have monthly lunch meetings with P-CAP members to discuss and reflect on their cases and client visits; some of these meetings will be attended by a supervising attorney. We may also hold community-wide events with the goal of illuminating the injustices of the parole process and highlighting the experiences of former P-CAP clients.

For more information, please contact the student leaders at p-cap@law.berkeley.edu.