When USC Gould School of Law 2L student Astrid Najarro entered the California Institute for Men, she was prepared to answer legal questions and explain parole readiness. What she didn’t anticipate was the relief from monolingual Spanish speakers when they realized she was a bilingual advocate. Najarro not only understood their language, she could relate to their lived cultural experiences.
Najarro, alongside other members of the USC Gould’s Post-Conviction Justice Project (PCJP), went to the prison to help facilitate a “Fight On! for Freedom” parole readiness workshop. Through the clinical program, students receive experiential training in parole advocacy while working directly with incarcerated clients, advising them on parole readiness and representing them in parole hearings, resentencing matters, and habeas petitions.
The Spanish-speaking participants Najarro met were moved by the chance to converse with someone who shared their language and cultural background. These initial conversations centered around feeling seen, heard and represented by someone they saw as “one of their own.” That recognition, she says, “changes their entire perspective of the legal system.”
The response she received at the workshop underscored what PCJP’s Assistant Clinical Director, Eunice Bautista, has observed throughout more than 13 years of working with monolingual Spanish speakers navigating California’s parole process: “I have repeatedly seen how language and cultural barriers prevent people from meaningfully participating in a process that determines their freedom,” Bautista says. “Equitable parole access requires more than interpretation services, it requires culturally informed advocacy, access to Spanish-language programming and professionals who understand the lived experiences of this population.”
Najarro, whose family is from El Salvador, has served as a translator for her relatives since childhood. She grew up with family members in the carceral system, which motivated her to pursue a legal career and to work with the clinic.
“It feels like everything I’ve done in my life led me to PCJP,” Najarro says. “It gave me so much respect for the incarcerated community, and it’s been a really healing experience for me. I am the person I wish my cousins had had within the system. This kind of work is so much more than just work.”
With supervising attorney Irma Vargas (JD 2014), Najarro represented a monolingual Spanish speaker at his initial parole hearing, a first for PCJP. In preparation for the hearing, Najarro worked with her client, not only to translate legal jargon, but to bridge the cultural gap of understanding.
A lack of rehabilitative programming and parole resources available in Spanish makes an already legally complex parole process that much more arduous to navigate for incarcerated monolingual Spanish-speakers. PCJP’s expanding Spanish-language work, including their Spanish parole readiness workshop “Lucha por la Libertad,” emerged out of that same need: to make parole preparation accessible to people who have long had to navigate the process through a language and cultural barrier.
Najarro’s work with PCJP reinforced the kind of lawyer she hopes to become. Shared language and cultural understanding allowed her to build trust with clients who saw parts of themselves and their families reflected in her.
“I just want to be a lawyer that people look at and aren’t afraid of,” Najarro says. “Someone they see as a reflection of themselves, of who they want to be, who they wish to be in the future, or even just as someone in their family.”
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