What I Learned While Interning at CDCR

Every college student knows how integral internships are to the college experience. As a non-STEM major at a school filled to the brim with STEM majors, I was pretty terrified that I wouldn’t be able to find an internship that would help me reach my career goals. To be honest, when I started looking for internships last year for the upcoming summer, I wasn’t exactly sure what my career goal even was. All I knew was that I wanted to help people who have been, as I call it, “mowed over” by the criminal justice system. 

Eventually, after hours spent perfecting my resume and refreshing my email every 8 seconds, I managed to score an internship with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Council on Criminal Justice and Behavioral Health (try saying that 3 times fast.) In a nutshell, this specific department of CDCR essentially focuses on helping protect the rights of incarcerated individuals with mental illnesses and substance use disorders. We also did a lot of research surrounding homelessness (e.g. most common causes of homelessness, possible ways to prevent heedlessness, and its relationship with incarceration.) Anybody that knows me knows that anything along the lines of fighting income inequality and mass incarceration is right up my alley, so I really got lucky when I scored this internship. 

When I found out I was the only student intern, I was mildly terrified. What if their expectations of me are way too high? Or even worse, what if their expectations of me are really low and I’m delegated with the extremely complex task of opening mail? Luckily, neither was the case and the work that I was assigned genuinely did help me learn a lot, both in terms of practical workplace skills and content research.

Some of the things I did while interning for this organization include (but are absolutely not limited to):

• Compiling an enormous fact sheet about mental illness, substance abuse, homelessness, and income inequality

• Visiting multiple facilities that help parolees find employment, attain stable housing, optimize their mental and emotional health, and further their education

• Attending meetings hosted by the Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council to discuss ways to help reduce the humongous number of homeless people in California (the homeless population in Los Angeles County alone is about the same as the entire population of Nevada’s capital city)

• Completing a research project to find out the best way to prevent unemployment and homelessness after release from prison for folks incarcerated for felony convictions (spoiler: it’s providing more post-secondary education programs in prisons and then linking graduates of those programs to relevant organizations to help them find stable, high paying careers upon release) 

• A LOT of data analysis. Like, a LOT. To the point where I was having dreams about data analysis 

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Going into the internship, I was scared that it would all be a waste of time in case I ended up hating this potential career path. But you know what? Even if I ended up hating my time interning there (which was definitely not the case,) at least I would know before it’s too late.

Even though my summer wasn’t exactly spent being a sloth while eating wayyyy too much mint chocolate chip ice cream and marathoning episodes of How to Get Away With Murder (I’ve definitely had those summers before,) I still had a great time. If I’m being completely honest, I think I liked this crazy busy summer a lot better than my sloth summers. I got to learn about something I’m passionate about, I got to network with people who are already experienced in what I want to do and were able to give me a ton of  pointers, I got to find concrete facts to support ideas that I intuitively figured already, and I got to genuinely start making a difference by submitting a research project on an idea that could one day change the lives of some of America’s most vulnerable individuals. The complete lack of free time was 100% worth it because I got a head start on making a difference in the world in a way that I want to.