Recent Grad Earns Prestigious Fellowship

Recent J.D./M.S.W. graduate Remi Abiodun (’21) has been awarded a prestigious Equal Justice Works Fellowship. Through a two-year fellowship project with the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, Abiodun will work in her hometown of New Orleans with juveniles serving life sentences as they navigate the corrections system to prepare for parole. Abiodun’s project is designed to provide necessary structural support to children in the adult prison environment, ensuring access to education, self-improvement and rehabilitation programs. The goal of the self-designed fellowship project is to ensure that juvenile life-without-parole clients are treated humanely. Under recent changes to Louisiana law, some juveniles originally sentenced to life without parole could become eligible for parole hearings, providing an opportunity for release after serving twenty-five years in prison. Abiodun will provide legal and informal advocacy for clients while incarcerated to ensure their humane treatment and increase their likelihood of success in their eventual parole hearings. Abiodun said she was inspired to do a fellowship with the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights because, “the work of juvenile justice is what I want. And the people of Louisiana are who I want to do it with.”

Published on June 4, 2021