By Taylor Epps, Criminal Justice Reform Summer Intern
My experience working as an intern for UU FaithAction NJ has been eye-opening.
When I started my college career, I never intended to receive a master’s degree, especially not in Nonprofit Management, but it was the route I ended up taking. After my first semester of studying nonprofits, I knew I wanted to incorporate this type of organization into my career field.
My career goals were to be a lawyer, and yes, I still want to practice law, but I want to work with a nonprofit and UU FaithAction has helped me come to this conclusion. My experience working has come from businesses solely—I have worked at restaurants, in megastores, shore stores even warehouses—and they all have one thing in common, which is profit. I was always being pushed to work harder or faster to meet the target goal for the day, with little to no regard for my opinion or my personal feelings in making the organization better. The work I did was more exhausting than anything and disregarded my mental and/or physical health. On the flip side, I have seen how nonprofits are the exact opposite. While businesses tend to focus on quick day to day profits, nonprofits seem to have a longer approach. They have a goal that needs to be met, but are able to meet this goal after a series of weeks, months, etc. I have found working with this organization that the energy and the work done by these individuals are passions of their own. Each and every person I have interacted with has a reason for constant contribution that I find interesting.
Not only has this been a learning experience for me, but it has also shown that this is the career field in which I belong. Along with UU FaithAction, I have been working with New Jersey Prison Justice Watch (NJPJW), and the overlap between the two organizations have been criminal justice task forces. One of the things UU FaithAction has allowed me to do is to change my thinking. When I attend the CJRTF meetings, I may have to think on the spot about a topic because I am allowed to contribute, which I have not been openly asked to do in the past. In addition, I have learned that keeping up with the current news and sifting through up-to-date articles can help me contribute greatly to the organization. When I first started, I signed-up for legislative updates, which I am now learning is important to my growth as an individual. I need to be attentive to not only things going on rapidly in front of the camera, but things that happen behind the scenes as well. Since I am used to a quick, fast-paced work environment, it has been a wonderful experience being able to map everything out with UU FaithAction and see the progress the organization and I have been making over the time I have been with them.
The work I do with NJPJW is focused on criminal justice specifically. The first assignment I took on was comparing and contrasting the actual Isolated Confinement bill and the regulations created by the Department of Corrections (DOC). This was interesting because the language in the text was vastly different from what I read on a day-to-day basis. The two things I took from this assignment were that, first, defining terms in the beginning of the document are crucial to overall understanding since words can be ambiguous. Secondly, I found that things on paper, even governmental documents, are not always what they seem. I assumed that this type of behavior was prevalent in society, but never had the opportunity to see it first-hand. I have had the opportunity to visit the New Jersey Department of Corrections website and separate the individuals with visit restrictions into categories based on the facility they stay in and type of restriction. Regardless of how tedious this may have been, after doing it for so many hours and light went off and I started to ask myself questions. My findings were that the simple tasks that require little effort, yet hours of your time can lead to questions and observations I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
I am still learning, but I now see that I need to be more active when it comes to the criminal justice field since I intend on working somewhere in the field. I need to keep up with legislative updates so I can see the progress of topics I am passionate about. I need to choose the text I read wisely and make sure I stop and ask questions that may lead me to finding information I wouldn’t have. Working with these organizations has taught me to learn in a different way than what the education system teaches you. College for me was a series of regurgitating information from a text into my own words or researching a topic and finding evidence to further prove my point. Working within a nonprofit has shown me that you will not always find the answers in a scholarly article, and sometimes there are no answers, but asking the right questions is what truly aids with your growth and development into learning vastly important information. It has been a wonderful experience working with both organizations, and I am looking forward to what’s to come in the remaining time I spend with them during my internship.