Our History

The New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement was founded in 1973 as the New England Journal on Prison Law.  After a series of informal seminars dealing with prison law at New England School of Law in 1972, faculty and students decided to begin the nation's first journal dealing exclusively with prisons.  The Journal began as a forum for prisoners, prison officials, lawyers, judges, law students and others to discuss their views on the legal problems facing the prison system, prisoners, and prison officials.  The Journal was highly regarded in its beginning years as the only student journal in the nation that directly investigated and analyzed issues facing the nation's prisons. The first issues of the Journal included articles by judges, esteemed scholars, practitioners and federal prison officials.

To reflect the faculty and staff's interest in furthering the legal discourse on prison law, in 1978 the Journal began the Confinement Outreach Program, a program allowing Journal staff members to teach pre-trial detainees about the criminal justice system.  The Program is the only one of its kind in New England and has expanded to include topic-specific classes taught at the Middlesex County Correctional Facility twice a week throughout the academic year.  For more information on the Confinement Outreach Program, please visit the link located on this page.

In 1982, the Journal changed its name to the New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement in order to accurately reflect its expanding perspective. Consequently, the Journal entered a new era in becoming the leading voice for the advancement of new ideas in the fields of criminal, juvenile, and civil commitment law.  Since changing its name, the Journal has consistently been ranked as one of the top criminal law journals in the nation and remains the only journal that specifically addresses issues of civil confinement law.

In 1997, the Journal began hosting a national symposium to address historical developments and current trends in the areas of criminal law and civil confinement.  In recent years, the symposium has been nationally recognized both for the subject matters addressed and the subsequent contributions from symposium participants in the Journal's symposium issue.  For more information on past symposia and this year's symposium, please visit the links located on this page.