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By: Gabrielle Palisano ’24
Shortly before taking the LSAT to be admitted to law school, I had no idea I wanted to go to law school. At the time, I had recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I wanted to help people, especially people dealing with trauma, but realized that the fields of psychology or psychiatry weren’t the right fit for me. But what now? Well, I figured that if I wasn’t going to help people on a person-to-person level, I could at least enter the field of law and hopefully make systemic changes that could benefit individuals within my community. So, I applied to law school, and was admitted to the University at Buffalo School of Law.
During my time at the law school, I’ve learned a lot about the foundations of law. But a lot of law school is sitting in a classroom and talking about hypotheticals, and not really a lot of action. I was certainly missing that human contact element I enjoyed in my psychology degree, and therefore decided to apply to UB’s Clinical Legal Education Program. I was later accepted into the Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic as a student attorney.
The Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic (CJAC) allows students, such as me, to represent clients seeking resentencing under the 2019 Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. Incarcerated survivors of domestic abuse can apply for resentencing if their abuse was a significant contributing factor to their crime. Student attorneys also work with incarcerated individuals in their parole applications and hearings, including visiting our clients in correctional facilities. Those visits turned out to completely change my views and previously held beliefs of prisons and our criminal justice system at large.
Law school, despite its best efforts not to be, can be very otherizing. In classes that intersect at all with criminal law, there’s a natural dichotomy: us and them. Us, future attorneys; and them, criminals, the people who break the law, and over the span of a few semesters, that dichotomy is ingrained in us. We are here in the real world, attending school and living full lives with nearly limitless opportunities and freedoms. They, the law breakers, aren’t here. In fact, they’re far away in their own closed off society with incredibly limited rights. Prisons, or correctional facilities, are overall a mystery to most people. We don’t know, nor do we desire to really find out how this population lives, and therefore we don’t think about the incarcerated population. Society willingly keeps itself in the dark regarding details of incarceration because if we shed some light on the reality of life inside a correctional facility, we would have to face a mix of some potentially really horrible feelings. Perhaps discomfort, guilt, anger, fear, anxiety.
When visiting our incarcerated client, I had a lot of preconceived notions about prisons and incarcerated people, largely formed from tv, movies, and other forms of media. Because of my preconceived beliefs, I went into the prison incredibly nervous and scared. But once we met our client and started hearing his story, my perspectives on prison and incarcerated individuals slowly started to turn.
Our client told us about his family, his upbringing. He told us about his passions and hobbies. He told us about mental health issues that he deals with that I personally also happen to deal with. He told us a hilarious story about the first and only time he went skiing. While belly laughing in response, I came to a few realizations: I was no longer scared to be inside a prison and talking to a man twice my size who was convicted of a rather serious crime. I also realized that this guy was just a person. It seems obvious, but prior to meeting our client I was conceptualizing him as a ‘prisoner’ rather than a regular person who made a mistake as a teenager decades ago. And by viewing him as a prisoner or criminal, I assumed he would be scary, mean, violent and intimidating, but that just wasn’t the case at all. He was an incredibly normal guy who is interested in mental health advocacy and has a degree in finance.
This simple experience of meeting our incarcerated client truly caused me to have a 180-degree change of views. I was able to reframe my thinking of prisons and those who commit crimes. Of course, there are exceptions and there are some truly violent and dangerous people who should be in prison. However, for the most part, incarcerated people are just people who got caught up in unfortunate circumstances or made a mistake that led to serious consequences. So many people make similar mistakes everyday but are simply not caught by law enforcement. These realizations have really changed my perspective and I no longer view it as us vs. them, law abiding citizens vs. criminals. It really is just us, one collective group, of which some individuals of the group have worse luck and circumstances than others.
It turned out that the Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic was exactly what I was looking for. It bridged the gap between larger scale advocacy work and one-on-one client interaction. Most importantly, my experience with the clinic helped me to challenge my own mistaken beliefs of prisons and incarcerated individuals.
This past summer has truly opened my eyes to how the law operates and treats individuals who are accused of crimes. While there is still much to learn and change, I am incredibly grateful that in receiving the 2023 Clarence J. Sundram ‘72 Fellowship Award, I was able to continue my work for UB’s Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic. This work is something that I’ve very quickly become passionate about, and I would like to genuinely thank the Sundram family for their generosity in funding this fellowship. People like you allow and encourage students to pursue justice in their local communities, and that is truly invaluable work, so thank you endlessly for your generosity.
Name: Gabrielle Palisano ’24
Fellowship: 2023 Clarence J. Sundram ‘72 Fellowship Award
Placement: Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic, University at Buffalo School of Law
Location: Buffalo, NY
One important lesson I have learned from this fellowship: “I have learned that in cases involving domestic abuse, there is always more to the story than what is on the surface. It is easy to jump to conclusions and make assumptions about people, however it is incredibly important to reserve judgment and keep your biases in check in order to really understand the whole story.”
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