This research experience in Columbus has strengthened my values around why harm reduction is so important and forever changed me as an individual.

The book, “Didn’t nobody give a shit what happened to Carlotta” illustrates the intersecting forms of oppression experienced by Carlotta, a formerly incarcerated transgender Black and Latina woman.

Experiences of trauma may result in PTSD and shape formerly incarcerated people’s relationships to their family, friends, and community.

How do people rejoin society after being in prison? Especially after a long period of incarceration?

Black women are neither here to save the world – or you! - and Black women are not less human either.

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault, Violence, Misogynoir and Racism

In December 2023, SHAWN was featured in SCSU’s student-run Crescent Magazine. Click to read!

How do we engage undergraduates in social science research?

“Put simply, harm reduction is any positive change.”

Volunteering regularly has given me valuable real-world experience for SHAWN but also an appreciation for the incredible work being done to de-stigmatize drug use and provide critical resources to the community.

My peers’ experiences of working in New Haven was very different from my experiences in a quiet beach town, but both communities are impacted by the systematic issues of housing and food insecurity.

What impacted me the most was learning about unhoused people’s toilet access or, well, lack thereof.

“The Knock” helps me understand the fear and trauma of family separation and how these threats may increase women’s HIV risk by encouraging them to hide their drug use.

Unfortunately, everything eventually broke apart for Malcolm X: countless FBI investigations, terrorist attacks, and a fraction between X and Muhammad, caused him to leave the NOI.

As members of the SHAWN Team, one of the first tasks required of us is to complete the CITI Online Training Course.

Sara Kruzan is a restorative justice activist. Restorative justice allows survivors to speak with perpetrators of crime about how crime has impacted their lives. The restorative exchanges in this Ear Hustle podcast are honest and intense.

Book Review! It’s the 1990s and Ted Conover is a “newjack”: a rookie prison guard at Sing Sing correctional facility in New York. Unbeknownst to his supervisors, Conover is also an author and journalist.

The first thing I remembered seeing was the statues. Illuminated through blue light with the haunting sounds of waves crashing in the background, their emotive faces looked up. Though they were statues, I could still feel their emotions, as if the spirits of my ancestors were in the room with me.

A small part of the prison was visible from behind barbed wire fences. We were told that the rally was partially visible to the men incarcerated in the building… our presence would remind them that people are defending their rights.

The workshop helped me gain clarity about why I organize and why I fight to create a just society.

The linear connections between slavery and the modern incarceration system are glaring and to ignore these common threads is an injustice to the history of racism.