On Friday 25th we interviewed Ross Macdonald. He works as the Chief Medical Officer for Nyc public hospitals. He was seen first hand what its like in jail and how it can effect a persons medical and mental health. This interview we wanted to focus on jails instead of prisons because we have already learned much about mass incarceration and what jail is like.

Something that personally struck me about this interview are male jail stereotypes. He told us that there are lots stereotypes about males in jail that there tuff or dangerous. But he said that they are actually very emotional from what he’s seen. Some other things we learned were: mass incarceration is a tool used to fight against drug use and gun violence, Covid-19 has been a huge risk for incarcerated people and lawyers want to release certain people because the prisons have been over crowded which increases the risk for Covid-19. We learned about male stereotypes in this interview which really taught us a lot.

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Alison Hardy works at prison law as a senior attorney and fights for changes to death row inmates with mental health illnesses. During the interview we asked questions about mental illnesses in inmates and how the prison helps them and/or deals with those inmates.

In the interview she talked about how prisons in California are extremally under funded, over crowded, and how its set up to undermine mental health. All these things are ruining the mental health of inmates. Mass incarceration isn’t only about being put in prison, its also about what is going on in prison and how we can improve these conditions. This interview was very informative and introduced us to the subject of mental health in prison.

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We interviewed Casilda Roper-Simpson, a Law Judge that works mostly on criminal cases. She has worked on public assistance, Medicaid, food stamps (SNAP) shelter allowance and assistance with rental arrears to prevent eviction. These topics are all connected into mass incarceration in some way and we got to learn about what its like being a law judge

In the interview she talked about how mass incarceration tears families apart, targets black families and communities, and how its a billion dollar business. “Mass incarceration comes form the lack of reasources in communitys.” “Mass incarceration rips families apart, targets families of color, and costs tax payers 260 billion dollars a year.” She gave us an incredible insight on what its like being a law judge and gave us a ton of great information.

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We interviewed Jacob Hutt. He works at Prison Law as a attorney. He helps people who incarcerated with mental health problems and people with disability’s. He taught us about how prisons have little to no resources for people with mental health problems, health problems, and disability’s.

During the interview we asked how do incarcerated people with mental health problems receive the treatment they need? He responded with “The prisons help people who are suicidal with the short term solution by isolating them so that they can’t harm themselves, which doesn’t help them in the long term.” This answer gave us a whole different perspective of what prisons do if a person is suicidal. He was super amazing to interview and gave us a lot of great information.

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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.

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On Jan 20, my group presented about our social justice project to the class. We created a slide show on mass incarceration in the U.S and told our classmates facts and about how mass incarceration has effected millions of people. One of the things that I shared in the presentation was the following,

“After reading articles and watching educational videos on this topic, I can say that I have learned a lot. And about how serious and how this problem is affecting a large part of the world. Mass incarceration has affected millions of people and communities and needs to be fixed and stopped.”

I hope to interview people who work to defeat mass incarceration.

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