By Joergen Ostensen

Jeanine Botwe, LAW ’20, said she thought she knew what Rikers Island would be like. However, she said media depictions of prison did not prepare her for her visit to Rikers.

“Everyone thinks that they know what it feels to be behind bars, as we all tune into so many TV shows which depict life on the inside the ‘pen,’” Botwe said.
Botwe attended Rikers with Advocates for the Incarcerated (AFTI), which is a part of the law school’s Access to Justice initiative (A2J). They were there to hold a “Know Your Rights” training program for the benefit of the inmates.

Botwe said her experience was nothing like what she had seen on television. She said some of the inmates reminded her of her friends growing up on the South Side of Chicago. Among them was a man who had been detained for two years awaiting trial. He said he was still hoping to attend his senior prom.

“It broke my heart to hear his fellow peers comment on how his dream of attending prom was unlikely,” Botwe said.

A2J, an initiative launched in the fall of 2016, aims to integrate access to legal help and the creation of a more just legal system further into the Fordham Law community through events, forums and academic research.

Matthew Diller, the dean of Fordham Law School, said access to justice had already been a theme within the law school, but A2J has helped to bring people together.

“It really brings those strands that are so important to the law school together, to help make a bigger impact and a more coordinated effort,” Diller said.

Megan Keating, LAW ’20, was one of the other students to visit the prison. Keating said she had visited other jails and prisons, but Rikers was a surreal and gut-wrenching experience for her.

“It is isolated from the city, literally built on top of an old landfill, and feels almost like a different planet,” Keating said.

Keating said A2J is part of the reason she decided to attend law school. Visiting Rikers made her more focused on her goal of becoming a lawyer.

“Sometimes I forget that being a student now means being a lawyer in a couple of years, and the visit to Rikers reminded me of that,” she said. “Experiential learning is essential to legal education, because being in a classroom can only teach you so much about being a lawyer.”

This semester, both Botwe and Keating helped A2J put on a forum on the controversial prison.

Jonathan Lippman, the former chief judge of the state of New York and now one of the leaders of A2J at Fordham Law, said Rikers is a problematic symbol within the justice system.

“Rikers Island is a symbol of everything that is wrong with criminal justice in New York City and around the country,” Lippman said.

The forum, which was planned with the help of students, brought together the leading actors in the debate surrounding the prison and was based around Bill Moyers’ recent documentary “Rikers: An American Jail,” according to Diller. The forum was moderated by Scott Pelley of CBS News.

Events like the Rikers forum are not directly advocacy work, according to Diller. The goal is to foster a productive conversation.

“A lot of what we do is supporting [and] convening advocates, pulling together information and resources for them. So a lot of it is supporting advocacy efforts,” Diller said.

Lippman said he decided to be a part of the initiative because he thought that Fordham Law has the potential to inspire change.

“Fordham as a law school, is perfectly positioned to provide a lot of scholarship, research [and] policy driven efforts,” Lippman said.

The amount of student involvement reflects the concern Fordham Law students have for the issue of criminal justice reform, according to Diller.

“Criminal justice reform is an issue of great concern to our students as it is a broader issue in our society,” Diller said.

Botwe said that participation in the forum has benefited her education.

“Advocating and educating others gives you a sense of purpose as a law student,” she said.

Lippman said the forums serve to bring important people on the issue of justice reform together from around the country, including the chief justices of Texas and Florida.

“We need to compare notes and see what the best practices are and then publicize those practices,” he said.

There is a real chance that positive change can come out of the movement for greater access to justice, according to Lippman.

“I think that access to justice has a great deal of momentum around the country. There is so much activism in the country today. This is a moment to have…justice in every sense of that word,” he said.

Students have been involved in the development of potential alternatives to the current system as well.

Currently, three second-year law students who are part of the Stein Scholars program are spending the entire semester working on a paper to re-evaluate the methods of legal service providers so that they can better serve people of lower socioeconomic status.

Milan Sova, who is one of those students, said the goal is to create a way for legal providers to serve multiple needs for each clients. Sova said the reason for this is because one legal problem can set off a domino effect that can lead to other issues.

“We’re trying to think of ways where legal service providers can not only tackle the one issue, such as housing, but can also work with clients to make them have more stability in their lives,” said Sova.

Vickram Paul, another student, said the goal is to show that the traditional model of direct service where a client receives help on a singular legal issue needs to be re-evaluated.

He said that the same people who need help with housing disputes may also require assistance with immigration or access to the public benefits they are entitled to.

Beyond that, they may require help from a social worker because of something like domestic violence.

Their paper is a part of the work National Center for Access to Justice, which is housed at Fordham. Paul is hopeful that it will help lead to policy reform.

“Our paper is the first step in what will hopefully become policy reform on a citywide level in New York affecting the way legal and non-legal services are provided,” he said.

These programs are connected to the Jesuit value of serving others, according to Diller. He said that they are integral to Fordham as a Jesuit institution.

“Our commitment to service, which is at the core of Fordham Law School really flows from the core Jesuit values of the university and those values inform everything that we do,” he said.