[Taltarzac725]

I worked with about 40 prisoners at Minnesota Correctional Facility -Stillwater as a student then Student Co-Director at the University of Minnesota Law School from late August or early September 1987 to May 1989. I found some had committed crimes that made them outcasts within the prison system. Others seemed to get a long with other inmates. My biggest headache was a prison lawyer type who kept throwing things at me while would have taken up all my free time. My supervising attorney told me to just forget about it.


My point is that the prisoners at Stillwater were very different from one another.

A few had committed very violent crimes but most of the others did not.

Two of these violent offenders were kids but were out of prison. I am not sure that either had been incarcerated but were for some reason attached to Stillwater. We were helping with defense for them related to their victims suing them.


I had started looking about how to improve materials in libraries for survivors/victims of crimes soon after graduating from the U of Minnesota Law School especially when the national law librarian convention was in Reno, Nevada the Summer of 1989.


I did find the people I contacted in Minnesota about my concerns very professional and open to my suggestions. I had ordered a directory from the National Organization for Victim Assistance and wrote quite a number of victim assistance providers in Minnesota soon after I got the Directory.


I was trying to spark a dialog between librarians of all kinds and victim witness assistance providers about the information needs of those most affected by violent crimes.

I would say that Florida responses left a lot to be desired. But I did have a great talk
with some law librarians in the Miami area over the phone. This was probably after we moved to Florida in 1996. Maybe even when we were in the Villages. Not sure the date or even year.