Article by JIE Volunteer Josh Cohen

Maddox Weckerle-Dietz grew up in a small, rural town in Nebraska, where public resources were limited and disparities in how students were treated—particularly along racial lines—were hard to ignore. 

She remembers watching classmates disappear from the classroom, caught in a cycle of punishment that often began with something as small as a missed school day and ended in incarceration. These were not isolated incidents. They were part of a broader pattern that revealed how harshly the criminal legal system could shape a young person’s life before they even had a real chance to begin it. 

Those early observations helped shape Maddox’s commitment to education and criminal justice. She came to see that incarceration was not simply a matter of individual wrongdoing—it was connected to broader structural inequalities, which often showed up as a lack of educational support in communities like her own. 

Now a student at Columbia University, Maddox studies Philosophy and Psychology, an academic path which reflects both her theoretical curiosity and ethical concern—her desire to understand the roots of inequality and to think carefully about how change can happen, not just on paper but in people’s lives. 

That sense of responsibility has informed everything she’s done since arriving on campus. 

Putting Values Into Practice 

Her involvement in criminal justice work began with an internship at the New York County Defender Services, where she worked in the Paralegal Unit and the Forensic Social Work Unit. During her time there, she drafted and edited legal documents for incarcerated clients, observed legal proceedings, and supported attorneys preparing for trial. In addition, she authored a successful $1,000,000 grant proposal aimed at expanding reentry services for clients returning to their communities. The experience offered her an in-depth view of the daily challenges faced by public defenders and their clients, and deepened her understanding of the ways in which structural inequalities manifest in individual legal outcomes. 

Afterwards, she joined the Post-Conviction Justice Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where she assisted in reviewing claims of wrongful convictions. The investigations, which often took months, involved reading case files, reviewing trial transcripts, and re-interviewing witnesses. It was demanding, sometimes frustrating work—but it showed that justice depends on the willingness to correct past mistakes.

At the same time, Maddox became active in student organizing, eventually being elected President of the Columbia Criminal Justice Coalition. Through that role, she has worked to broaden student awareness of incarceration and its consequences and build connections between community members and criminal justice organizations throughout New York City. Most recently, the Columbia Criminal Justice Coalition organized a campus-wide clothing drive, which collected more than four hundred items of clothing to be donated to incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated individuals and families. 

For Maddox, these projects are all connected—not by resume lines, but by values. She is interested in ensuring that dignity, equity, and accountability are not abstract ideals, but principles embedded in the criminal legal system—especially for those most vulnerable to its harms. 

Building Relationships Through Education

Building relationships through education is part of what drew her to the Justice-in-Education Initiative (JIE), which she joined last semester. After months of Department of Correction trainings, Maddox began volunteering in-person at Rikers through JIE’s Art Workshop, where she helped lead sessions for incarcerated women centered around creative expression and reflection. She found the experience eye-opening.

“You do so many trainings with the Department of Corrections, and they tell you that you have to be careful around incarcerated people—that they’re dangerous,” she explained. “But then you go there, and they’re thoughtful and engaged, and they truly want to learn.” 

Conducting workshops inside the jail required flexibility—sometimes certain art materials would not be allowed inside the facility, or schedules would change at the last minute—but what remained constant was the students’ commitment. Maddox recalls moments when an art prompt would lead to unexpectedly philosophical conversations about freedom, confinement, and imagination. 

The depth of those conversations stood in contrast to how incarcerated people are so often spoken about—as unthinking, unfeeling, or disengaged. 

This summer, Maddox will expand her work with JIE by serving as the Volunteer Coordinator of the Pre-College Independent Study Program, an asynchronous learning initiative that allows incarcerated students to complete academic modules and receive individualized written feedback from volunteers. Each module invites students to reflect on a theme—belonging, freedom, love—through assigned readings and writing prompts, which encourage critical thinking and deep personal reflection. 

Maddox will oversee the entire volunteer feedback process—tracking submissions, assigning volunteers, ensuring consistency, and developing future academic modules based on student interests. 

She is especially focused on improving the volunteer experience to ensure the program remains responsive and respectful to students’ effort: “We’re asking incarcerated students to take the time to do this work, and I want to make sure that we honor their commitment by providing consistent, engaging feedback.” 

In addition to coordinating the Pre-College Independent Study Program, Maddox will lead the editorial board for the JIE Journal, a forthcoming publication that will showcase creative work by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, alongside contributions from volunteers, educators, and activists. 

Her role in the journal’s development is comprehensive—recruiting editors, shaping the submission process, and ensuring the publication reflects the voices it aims to uplift. It is a natural extension of her belief that incarcerated people are not only recipients of education, but contributors to our shared intellectual life. 

When asked about what she has learned from working with incarcerated individuals, Maddox discusses the thoughtfulness she has encountered in workshop discussions. The students, she explains, are not defined by their charges, but by their curiosity and creativity: “They’ve had so much taken from them, but they’re still open to learning and growing,” she says. “They still show up, time and time again.” 

Advice for Future Volunteers

Maddox is quick to note that education alone cannot solve every injustice in the criminal legal system. 

But she believes that it can restore something important: dignity—the sense that one’s voice still matters. 

“I think that education has the ability to humanize people, and I think that that is particularly true for those who have been most excluded in our society,” she reflects. “It can reawaken a sense of possibility, even within the most dehumanizing environments.” 

For Maddox, this work is about returning to that basic truth again and again—and creating educational opportunities that reflect it. Her advice for future volunteers is straightforward: 

Show up, be consistent, and do not see yourself as a savior: “You’re not there to fix anything for them. You’re there to listen, to build a relationship with them,” she says. “Never forget that while you’re teaching them something, you’re learning something—perhaps even something more important—from them too.” 

That principle runs through all of her work, from legal support to educational programming. It is not driven by a need for recognition, but by an honest commitment to showing up where it matters and staying there. 

As she continues her studies and considers future work in public interest law or education reform, 

Maddox remains grounded in the experiences that first drew her in—and in the belief that transformation, both personal and collective, comes not from grand gestures, but from sustained, thoughtful attention.

Article written by Josh Cohen 
Josh Cohen is a rising sophomore at Columbia College studying History and Math. He is a lead coordinator of JIE’s Pre-College Independent Study Program.