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.
We will periodically highlight CIC’s student researchers in our newsletter, starting this month with Anthony Pimentel. Anthony joined CIC’s research team as a third-year law student through CIC’s partnership with the pro bono program at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. We want to thank Anthony for his contributions to our Families Together project and congratulate him on his recent graduation from law school.
Outstanding CIC Researcher: Anthony Pimentel
Tell me about your background.
I grew up in a smaller town called Sanger in the Central Valley of California. It’s a predominantly Hispanic town, including myself and my family who are all proud Mexican Americans. I was the first one in my family to attend traditional college and was also the first person in my family to attend law school.
I ended up attending UC Santa Barbara for college. After graduating from UCSB, I took two gap years and worked for a bipartisan lobby organization, which helped when I later wrote the Massachusetts Report for CIC. My experience working for a political lobby familiarized me with the legislative process and what it takes to get legislation passed on the state and federal levels.
After those two years, I got accepted into UC Irvine School of Law. I prefer exercising my legal skills in a more practical way, so I wanted to make law school as fun as it could be. For me, that was doing pro bono. CIC didn’t come across my radar until the last semester of my law school career. UCI has probably over 150 pro bono projects, which is both good and bad because it was easy to forget about gems like CIC when I had been so invested in other projects throughout my law school career.
What made you want to work with CIC?
CIC instantly drew a personal connection with me, as I had a parent who was incarcerated when I was at a young age. Growing up, I didn’t know my dad had been incarcerated—I found out later in life, through my mom. It was something my dad never felt comfortable sharing with me. Incarceration was normal in the town I grew up in. I knew a lot of people who were in and out of prison, including family members.
When I read the description of CIC, I thought, wow, this is really awesome, especially because of CIC’s focus on the child. Even though I didn’t know, in the moment, that my dad was incarcerated, learning that information as a grown adult affected me. Like, wow, my dad wasn’t there when I was born? I dropped one or two projects so I could work with CIC, and I’m very glad that I made the time for this very important work during my last semester of law school.
What did you work on during your time with CIC?
I drafted a report about the Primary Caretakers Bill (PCB) that was passed in Massachusetts in 2018. That bill was part of a larger criminal justice reform bill that was going on in Massachusetts. It provided alternatives for caregivers so they could still be with their children, like offering probation instead of incarceration or time in prison.
That was all great on paper, but after talking with Shira Diner, who played a really big role in informing public defenders about the legislation, I learned that in spite of all its great intentions the bill still wasn’t being used as often as it should be. Some public defenders didn’t even know it existed. If the lawyer doesn’t use it, the judge isn’t going to use it, and thus neither the defendant nor their child can benefit from it.
Another setback for the PCB was its strict definition of “caregiver.” It didn’t apply to some folks who were entangled in a child’s life but didn’t meet the rigid definition that the bill had. I really tried to highlight this in my Massachusetts report: the 2018 PCB was great on paper but had some setbacks.
Then we have this new effort years later, S1049, the Primary Caretakers Diversion Bill, which tried to loosen up the definition of what a caregiver is. Advocates of the legislation are trying to partner more with nonprofit organizations on the ground and make public defenders more aware of this legislation this time around. The new legislation also integrates pre-existing community-based programs, which is important because the bill doesn’t have any fiscal implications. According to the people I interviewed for the report, when legislators see a bill that doesn’t require a lot of money, it’s a lot easier for them to get it passed.
What stood out for you about the PCB?
This bill had the potential to be super divisive, but it wasn’t. When I interviewed Shira Diner and Austin Frizzell, I asked whether this bill was partisan and they said no, because of its emphasis on the children. If we put this defendant behind bars, how will it impact this five-year-old little boy or girl in terms of brain development, social development, and more?
That resonated for me because jail was normal in my community. Every month I would go visit my tío or cousin in jail. Thankfully, I never got on that track, but it would have been easy for me to because it was so normalized growing up.
What was your favorite part of working with CIC?
My favorite part was being able to use the knowledge I acquired before law school about legislative advocacy in my report. For example, it was important for me to highlight what did and didn’t work in the legislative process in Massachusetts, why things didn’t work the way they were intended to, and what could be improved upon in this new bill to make sure things are more effective this time around.
It was also fun to interview real people who have worked so hard on these issues. We take for granted all the grunt work that goes into the law. Being able to peek behind the curtain and see all the nonprofits and caregivers who contributed to getting this bill passed was incredible. The testimonies, the stories of impacted children and caregivers and how this legislation has impacted them, from a health and personal wellbeing perspective—that’s what really stuck with the legislators that helped get the 2018 Bill passed and what will hopefully help get the new legislation passed.
What are your future plans?
I recently took the bar and am going to be starting at a law firm called Snell & Wilmer in their Orange County office practicing in their Labor and Employment practice group. I am also interested in clerking for a federal judge down the road.
What’s one thing everyone should know about parental incarceration?
We shouldn’t just be concentrating on the defendant. We should take a holistic perspective when trying to create a solution to parental incarceration. It’s not just the defendant being negatively impacted by incarceration, it’s their children, it’s their children’s cousins… There are so many more people that are affected by this one person going to jail. If the defendant has made a mistake in some way but has shown they’re not a danger to society, there should be grace, at least for their children. And if that means giving a little grace to the defendant too, so be it.
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.