This summer I worked at the Remedy Project, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting for the humanity of incarcerated people through the administrative remedy process. The administrative remedy process is a non-legal, complaints-based mechanism that is often the only means of recourse for incarcerated people suffering abuse, neglect, or a myriad of other problems within the federal prison system. The Remedy Project was founded by David Simpson, a formerly incarcerated man who learned the administrative remedy system; however, the organization is primarily run by students. Because of its grassroots nature, the Remedy Project relied on free services such as Google Drive for organization and case management. Now that the organization has funders, they have been able to purchase software such as Casebook. My job this summer was to migrate our case management system to Casebook and perform trial runs using new cases created over the summer. I would also often work on these cases myself, which involved communicating with incarcerated clients concerning their issues and writing meticulous, well-researched remedies arguing for relief on their behalf.

At Barnard, I am an American studies and human rights joint major. My human rights courses have taught me how to read complicated documents with an eye for detail, as many international human rights treatises can be applied and interpreted differently. This skill has helped me while writing remedies — combing program statements to find rules that apply to our clients' situation can be very difficult. Often, we must interpret program statements based on small clauses in order to advocate on behalf of our clients. Additionally, I feel that my American studies methods course — Oral History in Method and Praxis — has helped me glean more relevant details from clients, either through the phone or email. Writing remedies takes training and effort. Most of our clients do not realize the level of detail we need in order to effectively advocate for them, and simply asking them for more details is rarely effective. Instead, employing interview strategies I learned in that course have helped me get a fuller picture of events when talking to our incarcerated clients.

The Remedy Project is an inherently group effort — it is and has always been composed of many different students and mentors. Being one of the younger and less experienced core members, I often felt unsure while making changes to our case management system. Towards the beginning of the summer, I frequently asked an older member of the team for advice or approval on each of my ideas. Gradually, I learned to step away from that habit and better discern what changes were large enough to need approval.

After this summer, I think I've finally accepted that I have to make a career out of helping people.

The level of satisfaction I experienced at the end of each day was gratifying — and is not something I feel at the end of a “normal” work day. The difference between knowing that my effort will go towards helping someone — regardless of how direct that link is — motivates me. Throughout the summer, I felt a renewed energy to excel in my studies in order to be a more impactful advocate because of the level of satisfaction with my work I felt.