August 21, 2019

Nina Harrison awarded MLAC’s Racial Justice Fellowship

This story was originally written for the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation (MLAC) Blog.

Fellow will help formerly incarcerated individuals in Central, Western Mass., reenter society.

The Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation has awarded its prestigious Racial Justice Fellowship to Nina Harrison. The two-year fellowship will support Harrison’s work assisting people in Central and Western Massachusetts who have been released from incarceration and are working to become reintegrated into society.

Harrison will be based at Community Legal Aid in Worcester starting in August. A 2013 graduate of Boston College Law School, she has worked as a staff attorney at the Responsible Parent Project of Rhode Island Legal Services and a legislative assistant to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. She was also an administrative law clerk for the Hon. O. Rogeriee Thompson on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. She will focus her work at Community Legal Aid on helping ex-offenders seal their criminal records and overcome barriers to housing, employment, and family stability.

“Nina’s work exemplifies the spirit of the Racial Justice Fellowship, which seeks to reduce obstacles to justice for the most marginalized people,” said Lynne M. Parker, executive director of MLAC. “Helping formerly incarcerated people reenter society and attain steady work and safe housing is an essential first step in their ability to live lawfully and with dignity. I admire Nina’s commitment to working with this underserved population, and I’m gratified that MLAC can fund this important work through the Racial Justice Fellowship.”

Jonathan Mannina, Executive Director of Community Legal Aid, said, “This Fellowship will enable us to help formerly incarcerated residents of Central and Western Massachusetts lead safe, stable, and productive lives. Re-entering society after being away for years is daunting. Recently released ex-offenders face a number of civil legal problems, many of which are linked directly to their criminal records. Our ability to effectively address these problems goes to the very core of the American belief in offering second chances. We are thrilled that Nina is joining us to do this critically important work.”

MLAC created the Racial Justice Fellowship in 2006 to expand the reach of legal aid to communities that have difficulty gaining equal access to the justice system due to linguistic or cultural barriers. The goal of the fellowship is to use systemic advocacy and other strategies to address pervasive problems of racial injustice, given the disproportionately high rate of poverty among communities of color and the unmet legal needs of these communities. The Racial Justice Fellowship is a two-year position and is available to MLAC-funded and Legal Services Corporation-funded legal aid programs in Massachusetts.

MLAC is the largest funding source for civil legal aid in Massachusetts. It was established by the state legislature in 1983 to ensure that people with critical, non-criminal legal problems would have access to legal information, advice, and representation.