About our Student Researcher Program
Since CIC was founded in 2015, student researchers from several academic institutions in Minnesota and other states have shaped the trajectory of our work. CIC empowers these students to research issues they find most important and provides them with the skills and knowledge to advocate for positive social change in their future careers. Many former student researchers have stayed connected with CIC, serving on our advisory board or appearing on our podcast.
This month, we’re highlighting Alexa Johnson-Gomez, who began her work at CIC as a student researcher. She recently received a Robina Fellowship from the University of Minnesota, which enables her to continue her work with CIC as a full-time legal fellow. Alexa’s work focuses on prison nurseries, carceral settings in which children live with an incarcerated parent.
Outstanding CIC Researcher: Alexa Johnson-Gomez
What’s your background and how did you come to work for CIC?
I grew up in Idaho, went to undergrad at UC Davis, and moved to Minneapolis to attend the U. My interest in going to law school came from wanting to do public interest law and/or criminal defense. In California, I had worked with Governor Gavin Newsom on clemency, which ignited my interest in finding different ways to tackle mass incarceration—specifically through different sentencing alternatives or ways to reduce the collateral consequences of convictions, such as pardons.
Fast forward to law school: I initially focused on criminal defense and felt a pull to death penalty work. My first internship in law school was with the Missouri Federal Defender and their Capital Habeas Unit doing death penalty defense. During the school year, I ended up working with the American Bar Association on their death penalty representation project. From there, I got more interested in policy and advocacy work. That led me into working at the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide in the summer of 2023.
Working there was an incredibly transformative experience. It brought together all these different things that interested me: sentencing, conditions of detention, human rights, and the intersection of gender and the criminal justice system. It was there that I got connected with [CIC Board President] Julie, who is friends with the Cornell Center Director, Sandra Babcock. She said, “Julie’s doing great work you probably want to be a part of.” As she was describing all of the things CIC was doing, I thought, Wow, I do want to be a part of this.
Specifically, I thought CIC’s focus on sentencing alternatives and progressive approach to thinking about how we can do advocacy work for folks who are incarcerated was so cool. I had been getting my feet wet with human rights work and Julie had been wanting the Prison Nursery Project to expand more into the field of international human rights—it was a really neat coincidence.
What have you worked on during your time at CIC?
Since the beginning of this year, I’ve been trying to nail down international human rights standards that should inform how countries run prison nurseries, how they structure their laws surrounding prison nurseries, and how, in practice, they operate their prison nurseries.
We started out from a really theoretical place. I was doing research on the text of human rights treaties, focusing on what the law says and what relevant standards govern this area. It’s now moved into us beginning to make international policy recommendations. We’ve been working on writing a couple of different articles, one of which is focused on due process as an issue: how children are placed with a parent in prison, really without any moment of consideration about whether it’s best for them to be placed or not placed with that parent. We are, at a bare minimum, advocating for a moment of process. That moment then needs a certain number of things in place to actually comply with international law.
I’m also working on an article that is going to be part of our 2024 Global Prison Nursery Network (GPNN) Symposium that is related to how due process intersects with the gendered element of prison nurseries and all of the assumptions that come with that, such as “it’s best for the child to be with their mother” or “the child should not be with their mother because she’s a criminal.”
We’ve also recently drafted a submission to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which we submitted at the end of August. Our comment concerns the lack of process surrounding children’s placement in prison nurseries. We got some input from our partners in the GPNN on our submission, so it was a really collaborative effort.
Tell us about the Robina Fellowship.
I was recently awarded the 2024 Robina Fellowship from the University of Minnesota Law School. It’s a postgraduate funding award that is only given to one person in each graduating law class at the U, so there’s some stiff competition. The idea behind the Robina is that public interest fellowships are hard to get funded, and they want to change that.
Going into this fellowship, I am aiming to finish my articles and to spearhead general international advocacy that CIC can be a part of, such as working with the UN system and the CRC to start norm-building and creating that ground floor of what is going to be OK for countries to do when they have prison nurseries.
Big picture, I hope to be a human rights lawyer and to continue doing work similar to this, where I get to work on interesting issues that pull together a lot of different thematic concerns around incarceration and gender.
What’s something you think everyone should know about prison nurseries?
That they exist! It’s crazy to me how many people don’t realize that prison nurseries are a thing. It genuinely blows people’s minds to find out about them, especially that there are facilities in the US where this is happening. This also can lead to facilities being underutilized, which is certainly a reality in the US; women don’t know they exist, so they don’t apply to them. By raising awareness through our advocacy, we can ignite discourse on the issue, and, ultimately, make positive changes.
Save the date
CIC has several exciting events this coming year. Please consider joining us for the following:
- Tickets are on sale for Grassroots to Global Advocacy, our fall fundraiser at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, MN on October 26, 2024.
- Our second annual Global Prison Nursery Network (GPNN) symposium will be held at Columbia Law School on November 1, 2024.
- Our Hub Residency symposium will be held at the University of Minnesota Law School on April 17, 2025.