project story: Tennessee Immigrants and Criminal Justice
McKenna Cox, Kimberly Pride, and Michael Wright
A.Overview
B.Background
C.The interviews
D.Summing up
The three of us worked on this project in the spring
of 2004, in collaboration with Latinos Unidos, a membership-based
community organization working to build local chapters in selected
locations in East Tennessee. Professor Ansley was closely involved
with some aspects of the project, and starting in mid-March we
also received helpful contributions from Spring Miller, Professor
Ansley’s research assistant, a pre-law student interested
in immigrants’ rights.
The goals of Latinos Unidos are “to provide a voice for the Latino community, to educate the public about their needs, and to take action to address these needs.” The basic purpose of our project was to conduct a preliminary investigation into the relationship between some Latina/Latino immigrant communities in East Tennessee and the
criminal justice system
. We carried out nearly twenty open-ended, qualitative interviews with native-born people and immigrants in our area, experimented with a brief survey ( Teacher Comment on survey troubles ) of immigrant families, produced both an Interim Report and a Final Report for Latinos Unidos. The report included notes from individual interviews, our findings and recommendations for future research, and a basic primer for non-lawyers about criminal justice structures and procedures in Tennessee.
During the semester the three of us learned a great deal about a set of people and important issues that have recently emerged here in our own backyards, and all of us feel that the experience changed our perspectives and understandings in lasting ways. The combined efforts of Latinos Unidos and the students at the law school fostered an environment beneficial to both groups. Further collaboration is both desired and encouraged by the students.
project story continued | 1 of 6 | next >
|
