(gentle music)
- The wonderful world of empirical research
and study and that just really kind of changed my life.
- I was always good in science.
I wanted to have a career in STEM.
I wanted to be in the hospital
and my aspiration was to go to med school.
- One scientific article
that's about 15 to 20 pages long,
I would literally spend hours and hours
diving in having as much fun
as you might (chuckles) find yourself exploring
like a new vacation spot.
- Then I applied to the PhD program again
in psychology at Columbia,
and this time I was accepted.
And I just couldn't believe it.
This was a best case scenario.
I had never had a best case scenario
happen in my entire life until then.
(soft music)
- When your body is actually locked inside a cage,
it's actually pretty difficult
to not also allow your mind
to be locked inside prison as well.
Learning about diabetes was a way for me
to break free from that psychological prison.
- You can be a scientist, you can do it,
and we're gonna teach you how.
And I just started to feel like,
"Oh, wow, I might have a future
that doesn't look like a cell."
- Being incarcerated is something totally different.
You have to have a heightened sense
of awareness of your environment.
Your survival depends on it.
So I think that the power of observation
becomes something that we unintentionally become great at.
- So I'm 17 years old,
I'm selling drugs just to support myself
and support my brother.
And I was sentenced to six years
by a judge for selling MDMA to an undercover officer.
The judge says, "I'm giving you the sentence
because of the dangers of this drug
and the amount of people overdosing for this drug."
I thought it was warranted.
And so while I'm in prison,
this is what's going through my mind:
"When I get out, I'm gonna study this drug,
I'm gonna study the dangers,
and I'm gonna warn people
about the harmful consequences of using this drug."
(dramatic music)
So we do studies where a drug is given
to participants under controlled lab settings,
and we study the immediate
and the delayed effects
of repeated MDMA dosing in humans.
And we didn't find any drastic increases
in heart rate and blood pressure
or negative mood in the days
following the repeated dosing.
So I just felt like I had been lied
to my whole life about the real effects of drugs.
Like what drugs actually do and don't do.
And then, I learned that MDMA
could be administered safely in laboratory settings
and that MDMA-related overdoses
are just especially rare.
Drug misinformation can lead to just harsh punishments.
(gentle music)
- When college classes were offered in prison,
for me, it was kind of a do-over, right?
I was able to take an environmental science course
while I was there.
I absolutely enjoyed it.
What was probably the most important thing
about those courses was that
they really just laid this foundation for me,
that had much more to do with study habits, right?
I got straight A's in every one of those classes.
And it kind of cemented this idea
that maybe when I got out,
I might be successful there as well.
I don't think I can ever learn everything about addiction,
but I can definitely do my best
in the short time that I have
in the rest of my life to try and do that.
(gentle music)
I'm gonna focus on one challenge,
the box on college applications
that asks about an applicant's criminal history.
- We know that 60% of people,
when they get to the question on the application of:
"Have you been convicted of a felony?
Are you formerly incarcerated?"
will just stop and won't even go past that question.
I was denied almost immediately,
I got a rejection letter back.
I had no clue that a collateral consequence
of incarceration was a denial to education.
So I was like, "I wonder what would happen
if I just unchecked the box?"
And I got an almost immediate acceptance letter.
In 2017, we began work on
what is known as "ban the box" on college applications.
And that became law here in the state of Louisiana,
making Louisiana the first state
to pass that type of legislation.
- That's potentially thousands and hundreds
of thousands of people coming out of prison
behind me that now are not going to face
that particular barrier
and hopefully will go on and apply to college
and to get into college and do incredible work
and be able to add to STEM,
add to science as we know it.
- STEM-OPS stands for STEM Opportunities
in Prison Settings.
This is a National Science Foundation-funded
collaboration to broaden participation
in STEM education and careers
for people who are currently and formerly incarcerated.
An analogy that I often use
is it's hard to really tell someone
to shoot for the stars
when they've never seen the sky
because they've been locked in a basement all their life.
So when they see people that have been through
the challenges that they've been through
doing these things like astrophysics
and information technology,
it makes it more real.
So we really go through this process
of lifting them up and helping them see
that they already have all the skills needed
to be successful.
We do that by providing mentoring,
by providing employment opportunities,
providing educational opportunities,
putting individuals in this network
where they can see themselves as scholars.
- One of my professors,
he kind of referenced that
I wasn't like everybody else, I guess,
who had been to prison.
And that didn't feel right.
I was like, "I'm not an exception to the rule.
I'm not exceptional.
I left behind thousands of women
who are smarter and deserve the same chance
that I now have."
- I assure you, I was locked up with people
who worked much harder than me,
who were much smarter than me.
I was just lucky enough to get opportunities
afforded to me that other people
didn't have afforded to them.