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Welcome to the Rights Advocacy Project, Inc., website.
We here at the Rights Advocacy Project,Inc teach people about the Criminal Justice System and how it works. We
also teach students how to stay out of jail and in school. We educate them on how to avoid danger zones by using
good judgment and common sense. Our goal, with this education is to not only reduce crime and victimization, but to
also reduce the number of young folks coming in to the criminal system. We will help to preserve that most precious
natural resource----- OUR CHILDREN
As a litigation attorney for the past twenty years, Rex L. Butler has seen the highs and the lows of our criminal justice
system. In criminal matters, the system is no longer geared toward justice, merely to process criminal cases. Far less
than one percent of those charged with a crime can truly afford to fight for their rights and their freedom. The number
of criminal cases being litigated is huge and continuing to grow. The amount of money available to process these
cases is insufficient and that insufficiency also continues to grow. The money needed to fund Criminal Justice takes
away from Scholarships and grants for educations.
However, our country continues to build more jails at great expense to its tax paying citizens while not doing enough
toward education, prevention, alternatives to incarceration and true rehabilitation.
Someone has to speak to these issues and force those who feel they are far removed from this ongoing tragedy, to
listen and place on the front burner these important issues that touch the lives of millions of people everyday.
Unfortunately, some people don=t realize that the faces of the people in the jails mirror their own faces. They are we
and we are them.
The following is a poem written by a good friend of mine K.G. Andersson and it goes as follows: The title is Reflection
On The Cook Inlet Pretrial Facility Expansion.
How quick we forget
that they are us
who sit and sweat
in that glass and steel
sarcophagus.
To be more specific:
they are not just them
or me
but also you.
And if that thought
is too horrific
or if you do doubt
these works are true:
just look into their eyes.
And console yourself
with other lies.
K.G. Andersson,
Anchorage, Alaska, 2002.
K.G. wrote this in response to the building of a new jail facility. That jail facility filled up and was over crowded in less
than two years.
Unfortunately, we are willing to put millions and millions of dollars into new jail construction and at the same time cut
money that is going to rehabilitate old schools or build new ones. We are willing to pour almost unlimited resources
into incarcerating individuals rather than putting the resources into early education and prevention.
We at the Rights Advocacy Project believe that our elementary, middle and high schools around the country should
have courses on the ills of alcohol and drug use and addiction. These courses should include the true picture,
however gross it may be, (age appropriate of course), of what happens to people who are mired in alcohol and drug
addiction, and crime. Testimonials would help to give and reinforce, in people, the desire to be and to stay clean and
sober and crime free.
The Rights Advocacy Project wants to be involved in helping to develop the mechanism(s) which will help to persuade
educators, administrators, politicians and those in power that this is the right way to start to close the door on
something that is so very very preventable. Addiction is a plague we can defeat. Victimization and the advent of new
criminal defendants can be reduced.
The very precious fabric of our families; our children, and our society depend upon it.
ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR AT LAW
745 W 4TH AVE , STE 300
ANCHORAGE, AK 99501
PHONE: (907) 272-1497
FAX: (907) 276-3306
TOLL FREE: 1-800-478-1497
EMAIL: rbutler@rightsadvocacyproject.org
