New Way of Life Reentry Project
Los Angeles, CA
Working with A New Way of Life Reentry Project, with the support of the Public Service Venture Fund and the Berkeley Law Foundation, Mihal Ansik provides legal assistance to families impacted by incarceration and criminalization who are navigating the dependency court process. Through direct legal advocacy, community education, and movement support, Mihal and ANWOL will develop a project focused on sustaining family connections, building access to reunification, and ending multi-generational cycles of incarceration. Mihal has spent the past ten years working with people in prison and their loved ones as an educator, organizer, and advocate. Prior to starting law school, Mihal spent five years working as a Court Advocate with the Center for Community Alternatives in Brooklyn, NY, where she advocated for incarcerated youth to be released into healing and supportive community-based alternatives to detention and developed workshops to equip youth and their families with tools for advocating for themselves as they navigated the delinquency process. At Harvard Law School, Mihal continued to advocate alongside clients entangled in punitive systems as a Student Attorney with Harvard Defenders, the Prison Legal Assistance Project, and the Criminal Justice Institute.