Long-time decarceration advocate Renagh O’Leary transitions from clinical teaching to tenure-track research.
For five years, Assistant Professor Renagh O’Leary advocated for compassionate release for seriously ill people in prison through University of Wisconsin Law School’s Legal Assistance to Incarcerated People (LAIP) Clinic. As a new tenure-track professor, she’s dedicated to examining decarceration.
“The questions I explore in my research are rooted in my experiences working with clients in LAIP and as a public defender,” said O’Leary.
O’Leary attended college at the University of Michigan and was inspired to pursue a law degree by the state’s then-notoriously dysfunctional public defender system.
A Yale Law School graduate, O’Leary started her career at The Bronx Defenders. The New York City-based organization supports clients through their criminal cases, as well as the dominoing consequences that can come from being charged with a crime: job loss, eviction, changes in immigration status and removal of children from their custody.
“What appealed to me about working as a public defender is that you’re really standing alongside your clients at what is often one of the most difficult periods in their life,” O’Leary explained.
Starting in 2018, she built on that experience while instructing students at the LAIP Clinic, which represents people in Wisconsin prisons who are seeking a second look at their sentence.
“A big portion of my work at the LAIP Clinic was representing people seeking compassionate release — release from prison based on a serious or terminal health condition,” O’Leary said. “All of my work with students in the clinic focused on challenging excessive sentences and seeking release for our clients.”
“The second-look advocacy that I both participated in as a clinician at UW Law and have written about as a researcher is definitely an area of hope.” – Renagh O’Leary
Every state in the country except Iowa has a compassionate release program on the books. But snags in the system, like mandatory sentencing conflicts and requirements to have a nursing home space secured before release, often block them from being effective.
“The de facto presumption is that you will stay incarcerated, even if you meet these medical criteria,” O’Leary explained.
Racial injustice is an undeniable aspect of working within the justice system, O’Leary said, citing profound racial disparities in incarceration rates. In Wisconsin, one in every 36 Black people is in prison — the highest Black incarceration rate of any state in the country.
O’Leary’s first article, “Compassionate Release and Decarceration in the States,” published in the Iowa Law Review in 2022, explored the challenges facing people seeking compassionate release from prison. Currently, O’Leary’s scholarship focuses on the role of probation and parole officers in decisions about sentencing. Her second article, “Supervising Sentencing,” will be published by the University of California Davis Law Review in 2024. Both of O’Leary’s articles were named runners-up in the American Association of Law Schools Criminal Justice Section’s Junior Scholars Paper Competition in the years they were published.
As the United States reckons with leading the world in incarceration rates, as well as the deep racial injustice within the criminal legal system, O’Leary sees decarceration as a way forward.
“The second-look advocacy that I both participated in as a clinician at UW Law and have written about as a researcher is definitely an area of hope,” she said.
By Holly Marley-Henschen