Today, I’m wrapping up my second full week at the Columbia Justice Lab — it’s been a great experience so far working with everyone in the Lab, as well as being able to access the network that the Lab provides for us summer fellows. This week, we were visited by Alex Anderson, the founder of the Re-Entry Theater of Harlem. He spoke to us of the importance of providing a space for empowering formerly incarcerated people as they transition back into society; the theater allows creative expression of the hope, stigma, and trauma they might have faced and will face as a product of mass incarceration. Alex also shared with us some poems and monologues that were performed in the theater, alongside the hand-painted, individually-molded face masks that accompanied them — it was a very moving and eye-opening experience. We’ll have more opportunities to meet people in criminal justice and nonprofit in the coming weeks, and I’m really looking forward to all of these new experiences, as well as building on the data analysis that I’ve been working on with the Probation and Parole team!