Research Assistant Internship (Remote or Hybrid)

Do you care about criminal justice reform, LGBTQ+ rights, or racial justice? Would you like to spend your semester helping to investigate these Kafkaesque systems and their impact on arguably the most marginalized populations in the United States?

Just Future Project is seeking a bright, driven, and conscientious research assistant to a nationally recognized expert in criminal legal policy and directly impacted leader in justice reform.  Your work will support analysis driving an active legislative campaign challenging pre-crime preventative detention laws in Virginia.  The first bill in the country to abolish these laws is currently pending before the Virginia Senate (SB 1244).  You will also help conduct research and develop materials for a presentation to the 14th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (Kyoto 2021). 

The selected student volunteer will have the unique opportunity to work closely with a professional formerly incarcerated advocate on a combination of state and federal policy campaigns tackling some of the most challenging and marginalized issues in criminal justice reform — including some work on the international human rights stage.  You will work at the heart of the movement to challenge systems of pre-crime preventative detention, registration and notification laws, and address the intersectionality between LBGTQ rights, racial justice, and criminal justice reform.

Tasks will primarily include online research, developing documents (including presentation materials for the UN Crime Congress and dual legislative & grassroots outreach campaigns), writing memos synthesizing your research, creating blog posts on developments in our field, collaborating with staff over the phone (on average 90 minutes per day), and possibly providing assistance conducting original research to create data documenting the population impacted by these Orwellian systems.

The ideal candidate is a detail-oriented self-starter with sharp memory and organization skills who is passionate about defending the inalienable rights embodied by the US Constitution and international human rights treatise (e.g. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and European Convention on Human Rights), and interested in learning to organize advocacy campaigns.

Must be 18+, willing to tackle challenging topics and tasks with minimal oversight, and able to commit to at least 25 hours per week for a full semester.

Virtually everything happens remotely these days, because COVID. You will learn how advocates work to shift the narrative amidst these obstacles and perform as a key member of our team. You will help develop documents and other campaign materials alongside a veteran criminal justice reform advocate, providing Gen Z skillsets to accomplish what wouldn’t have been possible without the help of a digital native.

If you would like to learn more, please email contact@ajustfuture.org with a brief cover letter, resume, and samples of both your informal and formal writing, which you feel accurately demonstrates your overall written communication skills. Questions are welcome and more details will be provided to interested applicants on the focus of our grassroots organizing campaign.  (Or you can scope out our website, which has a lot of information about the constitutional and human rights nightmares these systems represent.)

 

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