Name: Malachi Young

Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, Mass Incarceration in the U.S.

Date of Fieldwork: February 15, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Prison Law – Alison Hardy

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :

On Tuesday, February 15, we were honored to have a nice chat with Alison Hardy from the Prison Law Office. She is a Senior Staff Attorney who earned her undergraduate degree from Stanford University, and her J.D. at UCLA in 1988. Her cases usually follow the topic of mental and physical health, and she is currently working on the Plata v. Newsom and Hall v. County of Fresno cases.

During the interview, Ms. Hardy informed us of all the flaws in the mental health protocols in the prison system. She explains how the system is designed to undermine mental health, isolating and degrading anyone who shows it. There are some ways that they help those prisoners, but it is overshadowed by what they don’t do for them. She explained how when she saw how infected prisoners were treated very poorly during the HIV epidemic, that she immediately wanted to study this area and work on improving it. We really enjoyed talking with her about these issues, and we appreciate that we were able to talk with 2 people from the same organization. This is a very interesting aspect of our topic, and I wish to learn about it more.