Paralegal Pathways Initiative (PPI) is extending the arm of law into a helping hand for formerly incarcerated New Yorkers. Housed in Columbia Law School, the program fosters participants’ experience navigating the criminal legal justice system into potential careers in the law field. Applications are open until next Friday, Nov. 3.
Co-founder Devon Simmons, who immediately went back to school after leaving state prison, realized he never applied the legal experience he gained from incarceration towards his studies.
“The skillset that people probably develop most inside of jails and prisons is legal research, because everybody has to literally do some type of legal research whether to advocate for themselves or file a grievance,” he said. “So it’s a thing in which people [who] are incarcerated have to interact with in some shape, form or fashion. Why don’t we create a training course, which will allow people to hone those skills in which they develop inside and hopefully be able to connect it to employment.”
The program runs for 12 weeks from next January to May. Currently around 19 law students are preparing the spring semester curriculum for the new crop of PPI participants. They put together the courses with input by program alumni, factoring in legal research and writing, along with necessary professional skills needed to get hired.
Lauren Aboodi, a Columbia Law School third year working on PPI, said the spring program is a collaborative process between the organizing students and formerly incarcerated participants.
“We go to class with them, we interact with them [and] it’s been formative to my law school experience personally because it’s very rare you actually get to interact with people who have really been touched by the incarceration system,” she said.
Simmons’ fellow co-founder, professor Susan Sturm, said such experience is crucial for future lawyers who will inevitably work in a flawed criminal justice legal system.
“The law in the books does not necessarily resemble what actually happens in practice,” said Sturm. “We could call it ‘ground-truthing’ the law; that people who have been through the system are often the only ones who really understand how all of the systems that are often siloed come together and affect somebody.
“There’s also a risk of desensitization. That happens for people who work inside the system that there’s a normalization of a process that does not really think about what [this means] for the people who are actually going [through] the system. That becomes much more difficult to do when you have real people who you know are affected by things we would never want to have happen to us, or to anyone that we care about.
“[Then] there are so many stereotypes about people who have experienced incarceration that are reinforced often by some of the things that people learn in a conventional legal class. And these stereotypes really do not reflect the knowledge and the wisdom and the experiences of the people who complete their sentences in the lab and are basically ready to contribute and turn their lives around. And the preconceptions are often what stand in the way of having people be able to make those kinds of contributions.”
Too often law students become stakeholders to incarceration outside of the classroom. Sturm said such students often end up limiting their ability to connect with their clients. Working with PPI participants creates “more complexity around how people who are themselves affected by racism in mass incarceration navigate their roles as public defenders, prosecutors or other…lawyers in the criminal legal system.”
But the benefits are mutual. Aboodi said law students remain a resource for participants as they begin to apply for jobs and law school. To be clear, PPI is not a reentry program. Applicants need to be a year removed from being released to qualify.
“Your first year at home you don’t have the availability to be effective as a paralegal or somebody that’s reliable in this space and the worst thing we want to do is set people up for failure,” said Simmons.
For justice-impacted New Yorkers, PPI opens doors in the highly-competitive legal field to a population often struggling to find basic employment. Prior to enrollment, Kevin Campfield said he stocked shelves overnight for CVS Pharmacy and only after a connection landed him the job.
“I did 13 years in prison, from the age of 18 to 31 [and] I studied law the whole time I was incarcerated,” he said. “I said this was something I wanted to do once I got out because it’s what I know.”
Campfield went through PPI and started applying to law firms, ultimately landing several offers. He now balances his time working as a paralegal, attending Columbia University, and runs the National Paralegal Center, his own legal support services company.
After completing his degree in general studies, Campfield has aspirations of enrolling in the law school. As for why Campfield isn’t doing pre-law, he mentioned the fewer credits needed to finish. The faster he graduates, the more quickly he starts applying for law school.
“The 13 years I’ve been in prison was enough pre-law for me,” Campfield added, chuckling.
PPI Spring application: https://bit.ly/PPISpring2024Application
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.