The student-created organization supports the well-being and academic success of members
By EMME DUNNING — features@theaggie.org
Being justice-impacted — having a family member or friend involved in the criminal legal system — can be stigmatized in higher education. At UC Davis, Justice Affected and Impacted Law Students (JAILS), an organization at King Hall within UC Davis’ School of Law dedicated to supporting students who have been impacted by the criminal legal system, is working to change this narrative.
The club was founded in the spring of 2024 by law students Brenda Quintanilla and Dyanna Castañeda and has quickly grown into a thriving, tight-knit community.
Castañeda has always known she wanted to be a lawyer. The third-year law student grew up loving to read, write and debate, and law school was a natural progression for the soon-to-be graduate. Additionally, her identity of being justice-impacted was a major part of her decision to attend law school.
“Being justice-impacted in a third-party sense was a huge reason for why I went [to law school] because I saw the need for it,” Castañeda said. “Once you’re here in law school, you bring such a different perspective than your peers whose parents and their parents’ parents have all been lawyers. They kind of see the world a bit more in black and white. I feel like I kind of bring the nuance to it.”
Despite this, upon coming to UC Davis, Castañeda found that these same circumstances that drove her to attend law school were not widely talked about.
“Once I actually got here, it felt so weird since I’m in such a minority,” Castañeda said. “It was so weird to talk about it. There was definitely a stigma surrounding it.”
Castañeda, who was a second-year law student at the time, connected with Quintanilla — a law student who has since graduated — and the two began to talk about their shared experiences of being justice-impacted.
Through their discussions and connecting with more of their peers, the pair began to realize just how many law students shared their background and started to brainstorm ways to establish a real community.
“We were like, okay, we’ve got this identity, but we don’t really have a place for it yet in the law school, even though it’s the reason why so many of us are here,” Castañeda said. “The second we get here, it’s like a taboo. It’s hard to talk about. So what we wanted to do was
create a space where we didn’t have to put up a front and where we could talk to other people who are going through the same thing and who could empathize with each other.”
The result of these efforts was the creation of JAILS, one of the first organizations of its
kind working to support justice-impacted law students in their professional and personal lives.
Since its inception last spring, the organization has grown steadily, hosting picnics, fundraisers and even a bouquet-making workshop. Most recently, the group held a therapy llama petting zoo event in collaboration with the Office of Student Affairs to relieve stress as law students head into the middle of their tough semesters.
The event was spearheaded by Julia Martinez, a third-year law student and current co-chair of JAILS, who asserted that the organization has provided her with unique opportunities for connection with her peers.
“It’s a really unique community for us to have,” Martinez said. “I didn’t feel super comfortable talking about [being justice-impacted]. Being in law school, I feel like there’s not a lot of that. When I did get to law school, I felt a little out of place. JAILS has made me feel a lot more comfortable to have other people who have experiences in life like that.”
JAILS strongly emphasizes wellness and community building, a move that Emily Goll-Broyles, a second-year law student and JAILS representative, asserted was intentional.
“We’re not a group that’s trying to do advocacy or activism, but just a space for people to gather and be in community and feel less alone knowing they’re not the only person at the law school who faces these kinds of justice impacts,” Goll-Broyles said.
These sentiments were echoed by Castañeda, who reflected on the extra pressure justice-impacted individuals can feel to educate their peers on issues of incarceration simply because of their background.
“We were born into circumstances where we are expected to stand up and be very vocal about what we believe in because it’s affected us,” Castañeda said. “This is us taking a bit of a privilege to sit back and be with each other and do fun things. It definitely is about just taking a breather and just trying to encourage as many people at the law school as we can to take back that identity.”
In addition to providing important wellness resources and social opportunities for their members, JAILS also has a major goal of giving non-justice-impacted criminal law students a more comprehensive insight into their future field through informal discussion and connection.
“If there are people who are going into criminal law and don’t have our background, they might not have that natural sympathy for people that they’re representing or prosecuting,” Castañeda said. “We wanted to humanize the criminal law realm in that way.”
As many members gear up to graduate and continue into their law careers, many have asserted the importance of JAILS to their post-graduate success, despite many not planning to go into criminal law specifically.
Goll-Broyles commented on the lasting impact that she feels JAILS will have on her future career, as well as the careers of students from similar backgrounds to her own.
“JAILS has shown me that there [are] a lot of different ways to show up as somebody who’s justice-impacted,” Goll-Broyles said. “All of us are going into very different areas of the law. It’s nice to know that any sector of the law that I might explore in the future has somebody who’s in community with me.”
Written by: Emme Dunning — features@theaggie.org
