Freeman Boda

Through this summer’s Chuck Green Fellowship I was able to collaborate with We Resolve, a non-profit organization focused on the criminal legal system, which seeks to help those negatively impacted by it. We Resolve helps individuals and their families as they transit through the often confusing and discriminatory criminal legal process, by connecting them with resources and humanizing them in front of the court. Using a participatory defense model, We Resolve invites and empowers individuals and their loved ones by giving them the tools they need to better understand the criminal legal system, and enabling them to better fight their case in front of a judge.

At We Resolve, I undertook a wide breadth of activities to support their mission of saving individuals from the burdens of undue incarceration. A large part of We Resolve’s work is in mobilizing community members to show up in court in support of those individuals whose families reach out to We Resolve for help – an act that while seemingly small, makes a big impact according to the public defenders I’ve spoken with. As such I spent a fair bit of my time in courtrooms, sitting alongside other We Resolve members and the loved ones of individuals currently transiting through the criminal legal system.

Additionally, I undertook some research projects (such as finding information about prison conditions or who the wardens of particular institutions were), and helped create an intake brochure which will be used in the future to better explain the role of We Resolve to those we help. Included in the intake brochure is a checklist of documentation that We Resolve asks those they help to provide so that they can craft a “social biography” which humanizes them in front of a court, in an effort to reduce a potential sentence. I hope this will be a boon to the organization allowing them to expedite the process of sourcing these important documents.

Ultimately, while I was able to provide We Resolve with some help which I hope will allow them to expand their operation and help more people in turn, they were also fantastic at educating me about the process and I learned so much from them about the criminal legal system. Despite being a relatively small and new organization, I’ve seen first hand how they can mobilize whole communities to create an outsized impact and better the lives of those they help. I am so very grateful to both We Resolve and the Chuck Green Fellowship for the privilege of being able to work to tackle such important issues during this summer.