Jhody Polk’s legal education didn’t begin until she found herself in prison.  

As a formerly incarcerated person, Jhody served an eight-year sentence for invasion, arson, burglary, and grand theft auto. While there, she worked as a law clerk in the prison’s library. “In addition to learning the law and translating it to other women on the inside, I also heard their stories and truly understood the impact of criminal justice,” she says. “It was in prison that I understood how the law actually represented every aspect of life.” She realized that the laws being used to prosecute people could also be used to liberate them. When Jhody was released in 2014, she dedicated her new freedom to studying the profession she discovered behind bars. “It was in prison that my community first saw me as a lawyer and respected me as a lawyer. I found my legal identity and purpose.”  

In 2018, Jhody won the Soros Justice Fellowship and used the reward money to launch the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative (JLI), a grassroots network of incarcerated legal workers across the U.S. that is now housed at NYU Law’s Bernstein Institute for Human Rights. Today, Jhody describes herself as a “legal empowerment practitioner, a community peace-builder, and a believer in the SDGs as an organizing tool.” In May 2024, JLI convened the first International Incarcerated People’s Paralegal Congress (IIPC) with 10 other organizations dedicated to legal empowerment in prisons from around the world. Jhody sees events like these as overdue opportunities for grassroots advocates in the space to speak out in a global forum.  

Of the growing U.S. movement to embrace and achieve SDG 16 — Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, Jhody says she’s ready to realize a radical dream: Achieving individual and collective justice in America through local action on the Global Goals.  

“At the heart of institutions, systems, and organizations are people,” she says. “We have so much to learn from — and with — one another. There is power in coming together.” 

By M.J. Altman, United Nations Foundation