Week Five: What new skills and/or knowledge have you gained from your summer experience? Have you met anyone who has been instrumental in shaping/helping you conduct your project? Briefly, how has this person impacted you? What have you learned about leadership from this individual, and how might it influence your actions, work, and self in the future?
I learned a lot from my supervisor, as the senior site work manager, they were really inciteful about what it means to be a leader and activist in a community that's not your own. Through working on different projects that were community-based and location specific, I learned about best practices for supporting communities and their ability to create programming and services that address issues in them. Throughout the summer, we started to build a resource that collected information from existing organizations that addressed the over-punitive policies in probation and parole. A big part of this project involved respecting already existing community-based organizations and their ability to understand and address problems in their community. Within the context of my fellowship at the Justice Lab and as a Laidlaw fellow, this guidance was really important to me as I struggled at first with understanding how I, as a non-community member, could contribute to these community based efforts without reproducing some of the violent and harmful rhetoric and ideas that often come with field work. A lot of these communities know what the problems are, they just need access to the resources that can help address them in sustainable ways.
Week Six: For your final post, upload a video presentation or create a written or photographic narrative in which you discuss your project: why did you become interested in this project, what was the goal of the project, what was its significance or impact (real or potential). How did the project evolve or change over the course of these six weeks? Finally, please consider how your understanding of leadership (curiosity, empathy, teamwork, resilience, etc.) has informed your work or been deepened by your work.
Week Four: What challenges and/or difficulties have you encountered and how did you go about resolving them? Speak to a specific challenge you have encountered and some of the ways that you tackled the problem.
My biggest challenge was familiarizing myself with what probation and parole really are and how they differ from state to state and sometimes even county to county. I won’t be able to fully understand all of the conditions and policies for probation and parole in every state as they all vary so much. There has definitely been a learning curve but it's been really interesting to work through it. Community supervision is something that impacts way more people than I realized and connecting with people on probation or parole as well as purposefully seeking out their stories (whether through looking at art or reading essays and letters they publish) has helped me build a better understanding of how these policies look like in the day-to-day lives of people on community supervision.
Week Three: What does a typical day look like this summer? Aside from a narrative description, upload a photo, video and/or other media submission!
A typical day for me involves going into the office space that the Justice Lab operates in and (depending on the project I’m working on) reading different community reports about probation and parole as well as legislation relating to P+P reform. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures from the office, but I do have a couple of screenshots of the many tabs I have open on my laptop.https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dEBY3oVgBq2skD_l7K5xzq6BH0QiVMFl/view?usp=drive_link
Week One: As you set out on your research or community engagement project, do you find yourself experiencing any worries or insecurities about saying something that’s already been said? How do we as researchers and/or volunteers learn to address or set aside those insecurities or, better yet, to use them to our advantage?
My work this summer engages with policy reform in Probation and Parole (community supervision) throughout the US. Right now, I am working with a team that is trying to showcase the effectiveness of less punitive community supervision and the importance of community programs in supporting people throughout their reentry and reintegration into society after incarceration. Because of how resistant many people are to these reforms, having existing examples of successful reform implementation is essential in convincing people that community supervision isn't helping people in the way it should right now. Leaning into this has been helpful in garnering support for these policy reforms.
Week Two: If your project connects with your research from last summer, explain the ways in which it picks up on themes, issues, or questions that are important to you. How are you expanding on your project from last summer? How is your understanding of this topic evolving?
My work this summer loosely connects with last summer. While I examined community responses to police violence through music the previous summer, I am now looking at how policing looks like for people on probation and parole. Specifically, I’ve been working with people on promoting legislation that makes these systems less punitive and restrictive on people's lives. Policing and its inability to effectively enforce public safety, particularly in black and brown communities, is a vital thread that connects my work across these 2 years. Last summer I engaged with the worst possible results of policing (fatal violence against community members) and this summer I am working with one of the more ideal courses that happens when you enter the system (the criminal justice system) which involves doing your time and getting out early on probation or parole. While I have an abolitionist perspective that is greatly informed by work from last summer, it's been really important for me to think about the more practical side of abolition and the role reform plays in impacting lives right now. I've been learning a lot about the importance of balancing the goals of abolition and the need for immediate change.
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Recent Comments
Week Five:
What new skills and/or knowledge have you gained from your summer experience? Have you met anyone who has been instrumental in shaping/helping you conduct your project? Briefly, how has this person impacted you? What have you learned about leadership from this individual, and how might it influence your actions, work, and self in the future?
I learned a lot from my supervisor, as the senior site work manager, they were really inciteful about what it means to be a leader and activist in a community that's not your own. Through working on different projects that were community-based and location specific, I learned about best practices for supporting communities and their ability to create programming and services that address issues in them. Throughout the summer, we started to build a resource that collected information from existing organizations that addressed the over-punitive policies in probation and parole. A big part of this project involved respecting already existing community-based organizations and their ability to understand and address problems in their community. Within the context of my fellowship at the Justice Lab and as a Laidlaw fellow, this guidance was really important to me as I struggled at first with understanding how I, as a non-community member, could contribute to these community based efforts without reproducing some of the violent and harmful rhetoric and ideas that often come with field work. A lot of these communities know what the problems are, they just need access to the resources that can help address them in sustainable ways.
Week Six:
For your final post, upload a video presentation or create a written or photographic narrative in which you discuss your project: why did you become interested in this project, what was the goal of the project, what was its significance or impact (real or potential). How did the project evolve or change over the course of these six weeks? Finally, please consider how your understanding of leadership (curiosity, empathy, teamwork, resilience, etc.) has informed your work or been deepened by your work.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KApPvcbbIM4iGN9eySqKlQUyhc5hvU-Fx/view?usp=sharing
Week Four:
What challenges and/or difficulties have you encountered and how did you go about resolving them? Speak to a specific challenge you have encountered and some of the ways that you tackled the problem.
My biggest challenge was familiarizing myself with what probation and parole really are and how they differ from state to state and sometimes even county to county. I won’t be able to fully understand all of the conditions and policies for probation and parole in every state as they all vary so much. There has definitely been a learning curve but it's been really interesting to work through it. Community supervision is something that impacts way more people than I realized and connecting with people on probation or parole as well as purposefully seeking out their stories (whether through looking at art or reading essays and letters they publish) has helped me build a better understanding of how these policies look like in the day-to-day lives of people on community supervision.
Week Three:
What does a typical day look like this summer? Aside from a narrative description, upload a photo, video and/or other media submission!
A typical day for me involves going into the office space that the Justice Lab operates in and (depending on the project I’m working on) reading different community reports about probation and parole as well as legislation relating to P+P reform. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures from the office, but I do have a couple of screenshots of the many tabs I have open on my laptop.https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dEBY3oVgBq2skD_l7K5xzq6BH0QiVMFl/view?usp=drive_link
Week One:
As you set out on your research or community engagement project, do you find yourself experiencing any worries or insecurities about saying something that’s already been said? How do we as researchers and/or volunteers learn to address or set aside those insecurities or, better yet, to use them to our advantage?
My work this summer engages with policy reform in Probation and Parole (community supervision) throughout the US. Right now, I am working with a team that is trying to showcase the effectiveness of less punitive community supervision and the importance of community programs in supporting people throughout their reentry and reintegration into society after incarceration. Because of how resistant many people are to these reforms, having existing examples of successful reform implementation is essential in convincing people that community supervision isn't helping people in the way it should right now. Leaning into this has been helpful in garnering support for these policy reforms.
Week Two:
If your project connects with your research from last summer, explain the ways in which it picks up on themes, issues, or questions that are important to you. How are you expanding on your project from last summer? How is your understanding of this topic evolving?
My work this summer loosely connects with last summer. While I examined community responses to police violence through music the previous summer, I am now looking at how policing looks like for people on probation and parole. Specifically, I’ve been working with people on promoting legislation that makes these systems less punitive and restrictive on people's lives. Policing and its inability to effectively enforce public safety, particularly in black and brown communities, is a vital thread that connects my work across these 2 years. Last summer I engaged with the worst possible results of policing (fatal violence against community members) and this summer I am working with one of the more ideal courses that happens when you enter the system (the criminal justice system) which involves doing your time and getting out early on probation or parole. While I have an abolitionist perspective that is greatly informed by work from last summer, it's been really important for me to think about the more practical side of abolition and the role reform plays in impacting lives right now. I've been learning a lot about the importance of balancing the goals of abolition and the need for immediate change.