Name: Dorsey Smith

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

Date of Fieldwork: February 4, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Sophia Henager, Law Fellow, Equal Justice Initiative

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?[:: :

We interviewed Sophia Henager. She works at EJI (Equal Justice Initiative) as a Law fellow. She has worked on incarceration cases, death row, felonies, and misdemeanor cases. She has taught us a lot about mass incarceration and how it can completely destroy people’s lives, and how political decisions have largely affected incarcerated people.

During the interview we asked questions about how mass incarceration affects communities. She gave us some really great answers. She said that “Today almost half of the people in federal prisons are incarcerated for drug offenses, and ⅔ of that 50 percent are people of color.” This fact was produced in 2017, and she said that this number has most likely risen. She gave us a ton of great new information and was great for our first interview.