Biography
Alan Mills is the Executive Director of Uptown People’s Law Center–a nonprofit community legal clinic located on the North Side of Chicago. UPLC is a legal organization that fights for justice for tenants, the disabled, and prisoners in Illinois. He began at UPLC as a volunteer law student at UPLC in 1979, became the Legal Director in 1992, and became the Executive Director in 2014.
Alan has tried dozens of individual cases on behalf of prisoners in state and federal court during the last 40 years. UPLC is currently lead counsel in six class action cases alleging that Illinois prisons violate the constitutional rights of Illinois prisoners. These include claims that the medical (Lippert v Ghosh) and mental health (Rasho v Jeffreys) care provided to prisoners in all Illinois prisons violates the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual treatment. Other pending class action cases include the state’s failure to accommodate the communication needs of deaf and hard of hearing prisoners (Holmes v Jeffreys), a claim that hundreds of guards used excessive force during a series of shakedowns (Ross v Gossett), and a case challenging the excessive use of solitary (Davis v. Jeffreys).
Alan graduated from Northwestern University School of Law in 1981, cum laude, with honors. Since 2005, he has served as an adjunct professor at Northwestern, teaching a seminar on Prisons and Prisoners’ Rights. For the last twelve years, pursuant to a contract with the courts, he has helped train and support attorneys appointed to represent prisoners in civil rights cases by the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of Illinois.