Sophia Opferman / Urban Justice Center / New York, USA
The Urban Justice Center is a non-profit advocacy and legal aid service organization based in New York City. Their organization works on several human rights-focused issues, including criminalization and incarceration, which is the primary focus of their Freedom Agenda project. The Freedom Agenda describes itself as a “member-led project, dedicated to organizing people and communities directly impacted by incarceration to achieve decarceration and system transformation.” Further, they seek to “defend the human rights of incarcerated people, divest from systems of punishment, and redistribute those resources to the people and communities that have been most harmed by mass criminalization and systemic racism.”
As touched upon in the mission of the Freedom Agenda’s work, incarceration in the United States is a form of dehumanization and one that is closely linked to structural racism. This link is well documented in The United States, where one in every three Black boys is incarcerated, compared to one in every six Latino boys and one in every 17 White boys. Criminalization and incarceration are not only issues of race, however, considering that once behind bars, incarcerated individuals of all races are subjected to inhumane conditions through which they are denied access to fundamental human rights such as nutritional food, sanitary conditions, access to education, and freedom from solitary confinement.
Further, the dehumanizing factor of incarceration does not end with release from prison, as formerly incarcerated individuals in American society continue to face limitations on their freedom and access to their rights following reentry. Such limitations include denial of voting rights, housing inaccessibility or insecurity, and the inability to pass a background check, severely limiting job opportunities.
In pursuing this fellowship and a partnership with the Urban Justice Center, I hope to continue my research into the structuralization of racial inequality through mass incarceration. Specifically, I am interested in understanding the law’s part in this structuralization. How has the law been used to codify injustice? And how has this led to the rise of mass incarceration in the contemporary moment? What are the possibilities and limitations of the law as a remedy for structural racial inequality? Is the law the most effective approach? What avenue(s) if not the law? My summer project will seek to unpack these questions and develop an understanding of the best ways to mobilize for the human rights of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated citizens.