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State of Oregon Law Library Legal Research Blog

06/15/2022
Amanda Duke

 

The Oregon State Bar, through a grant from the Professional Liability Fund, is making the BarBooks available online to all library patrons for the first time. The BarBooks is a library of treatises that are published by the Oregon State Bar. These books are aimed at lawyers, but they are also a valuable resource for those who are representing themselves. Most of these books include sample legal forms that are specific to the Oregon courts and law.  

For the general public, you will need to contact SOLL staff (during library operating hours) and request a digital token. Once you have been given the token, follow these instructions. This token must be used within 30 minutes or it expires. Once activated, your token will remain validated as long as you are actively searching and your browser stays open. You may request additional tokens as needed.

For state agency patrons who are not lawyers, you will be able to create your own non-member account (you must use a state agency issued email address in order for the system to recognize you). Instructions for creating an account are also found on our website.

The Oregon State Bar has tips on how to navigate BarBooks, including searching, printing and downloading. 

02/24/2020
Georgia Armitage

Great minds think alike! In early 2019, State Law Librarian, Cathryn Bowie noticed a strange similarity. The State of Oregon Law Library (SOLL) and the Department of Corrections’s (DOC) work improving legal resources for adults in custody (AIC), uses the same strategies as the Norwegian Correctional Service.

Lower recidivism and incarceration rates make Norway’s system appealing to Oregon – correctional institutions and courts save money and released offenders harm fewer people. Looking to follow in Norway’s footsteps, the Oregon DOC visited Norway in 2018 and returned with plans to improve Oregon’s system. Around the same time SOLL and the DOC started implementing their cloud-based resource model.

Norway’s model depends on teamwork. Since different agencies have different strengths and perspectives, their combined efforts create better programs. In Norway, outside agencies provide AICs with education, healthcare, and any other needed services – the import model. For example, the Ministry of Education of Research employs teachers – not the correctional service – ensuring teachers can continue developing professionally.

In Oregon’s case, SOLL’s perspective illuminated legal resource access problems. SOLL often received letters from AICs asking for resources that SOLL expected AICs could access. After reaching out to prison law libraries, SOLL realized that AICs struggled to continue research after transfers between correctional facilities, because each library had different materials and access methods. Working together, SOLL and the DOC used their strengths to solve the problem: SOLL understands how to provide legal resources, and the DOC understands how to implement solutions safely and securely. Ultimately, the two developed a cloud-based resource system that AICs can access at any facility, and that the DOC expects will be “a national model.”

Norway’s experiences also demonstrate how collaboration with other agencies or branches of government can help AICs reconnect with society. Norway and other Nordic countries follow the principle of normality. They create prison experiences that mirror life outside to ease AICs’ transition back to society. Often AICs struggle readjusting after release, a type of reverse culture shock. Working with outside organizations helps normalize AICs’ experiences: AICs familiarize themselves with needed services and interactions between AICs and the outside world reduces prejudice against AICs.

Norway’s prison model suggests possibilities for Oregon’s future, such as increased collaboration with employment or educational organizations (The DOC currently collaborates with community colleges and the University of Oregon). Improved educational access, for example, would reduce recidivism rates. The RAND Corporation analyzed 50 studies investigating if correctional education programs reduced the chance that American AICs would reoffend after release. They found that enrolled AICs were 43% less likely to commit another crime. Using the new cloud-based system, AICs could take digital classes like traditional students, reducing the shock of entering school after release and encouraging more positive interactions between AICs and society.

Of course, Oregon and Norway are different cultures, but SOLL and the DOC’s experience shows that Oregon can learn from Norway’s example. As SOLL and the DOC discovered, even listening to AIC’s input can help them feel connected with society. Cathryn Bowie described how when AICs “realized someone had listened to their input… [t]hey became engaged,” and they began asking for “education and training in preparation for returning to society.” In that moment, society recognized them as patrons instead of prisoners.

 

More Resources:

Miller, Sage, Kelly Raths, and Cathryn Bowie. “Law Library Resources Now Online Available For Prisoners.” Think Out Loud, Oregon Public Broadcasting, December 12, 2019.

Tooley, Toby and Maurice Chammah. “I Struggled to Help a Prisoner. In Norway, I Found a Better Way.” The Marshall Project, February 13, 2020.

 

Image Credit: Homann, Johann. Scandinavia complectens Sueciae Daniae & Norvegiae Regna ex Tabulis Joh. Bapt Homanni Norimbergae. Circa 1730. Wikipedia Commons, last modified March 16, 2011. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/.

12/03/2019
profile-icon Lynne Palombo

Library News –

Most people can hop on the internet and find a wide range of legal information when they need it. But that’s not true, for a lot of good reasons, for people held in correctional facilities.

Thanks to a new partnership between the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) and the State of Oregon Law Library (SOLL) – part of the Oregon Judicial Department (OJD), people in custody now have secure access to legal information from the cloud without the risks of broad internet access. The new program reimagines the traditional prison law library to improve access to legal information for adults and youth in state custody. The Oregon Youth Authority (OYA) and Oregon State Hospital (OSH) will also benefit from this new system.

“We believe we are the first corrections agency in the nation to provide a soundly secure, internal, cloud-based legal resource system to adults in custody,” said Kelly Raths, Adults in Custody (AIC) and Community Advocacy Administrator for the Oregon Department of Corrections. “Put more simply, we’ve implemented a system for secure access to legal information in correctional facilities that could become a national model.”

The law requires that people in state custody have access to legal resources to pursue cases related to their confinement. Those resources can also help people in custody address other legal issues that can increase their chances for stability and success once they are released. 

In the past, DOC met its obligations with a mix of books and subscription services, but specific resources and facilities could vary widely between institutions. In addition, traditional contracting with many legal information and research vendors required multiple individual purchases of the same or similar products by different agencies with significant duplication and great variation in pricing.

“To address those challenges, we had to rethink the traditional idea of a law library in a correctional facility,” explained State Law Librarian Cathryn Bowie. She said the solutions included a lot of listening, some serious negotiation with vendors and consolidation of contracts, and a strong focus on security.

Bowie traveled the state to see the facilities first-hand, listen to staff and people in custody, and work with DOC leadership to identify the best path forward. She said the shared goal for SOLL and DOC was two-fold: to improve access to justice and to implement smart business practices.

With the DOC project, corrections leadership worked with SOLL to define the project requirements, identify potential vendors, research and address security concerns, and consolidate contracts for a more cost-effective solution.

DOC information technology staff spent more than a year proofing the safeguards that ensure that users do not have access to anything other than the legal resources provided by the vendor, Fastcase. “The computers in our education and legal library labs can only connect to one IP address—Fastcase,” explained Raths. “All links stay within the secure Fastcase system. There is no access to the wider internet and no outsider access from the internet into our system.”

With the new system, all facilities now have access to a broad and consistent array of legal resources, including many they didn’t have before, such as daily updates to case law; statutes, and session laws; Oregon Administrative Rules; and information for all 50 states. In the past, they only had access to Oregon and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. 

Raths said the new legal resource system has been well-received. “Fastcase is easy to use and intuitive,” she explained, “and users across the state resoundingly agreed that this cloud-based resource is a welcome change.”

Through the new purchasing and subscription arrangements brokered by SOLL, the new approach will pay for the required IT and equipment upgrades in the first two-year budget cycle and save about $470,000 every two years after that. The project may also pave the way for secure access to a wider range of cloud-based educational resources in the future.

“This is a great example of how two branches of state government – the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch – can work together to serve the public and justice,” said Raths.

--Todd Sprague, Oregon Judicial Department, 503-986-5524

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