Carol Jacobsen’s Clemency Project in the News

Stamps Professor Carol Jacobsen is an award-winning social documentary artist whose works in video and photography address issues of women’s criminalization and censorship. As director of the Michigan Justice and Clemency Project, Jacobsen works to free women prisoners who were convicted of murder but who acted in self-defense against abusers and did not receive due process or fair trials. She also conducts public education and advocacy for justice, human rights, and humane alternatives to incarceration for women. 

Michigan Women’s Justice and Clemency Project took up Delores Kapuscinski’s case. The 67 year-old was sentenced to life without parole in 1988, but she has a clemency hearing coming up in July — 29 years after she was sent to prison. Recently, Jacobsen was interviewed for WZZM 13 TV, an ABC affiliate serving the west side of the state.

“She has now served 29 years in prison for shooting her husband who was very violent, primarily sexually violent,” says Justice and Clemency Project director Carol Jacobson. ​“There was, of course, little understanding of domestic violence in 1987.”

Learn more about the Clemency Project in Jacobsen’s forthcoming book, For Dear Life (Michigan Publishing, 2018).