Ana Sofia Harrison: All right. So we're collecting this interview for the Barnard Archives Oral History Project. Today is August 21, 2023. And it looks like Ava just got here. Hi! We're just getting started.
All right. So the first question that I would like to start with is: can tell us a bit about your childhood and what it was like growing up in New York City?
Kate Mogulescu: Broad question. Yes. So as I think I shared with you, when I first met with you both for introductions, I grew up in Manhattan. And I was born in 1978. And so most of my childhood was in the 1980s. In New York City, which had a lot of pluses and some minuses. I can't really compare it to
anything, because I didn't live anywhere else as a child. So all I know is growing up in New York City.
But I went to PS87 for elementary school, then the Center School for middle school, and then Stuyvesant High School. And I lived a few blocks away from my elementary school. So I was able to walk to school, which I realize now is sort of unique in people's experiences, a lot of people who grew up in
different places have longer travel to get to school. But I appreciate that I grew up in New York City in a time when it retained some of its sort of unique elements, unique characteristics.
I think now, in 2023, a lot of cities across the world closely resemble each other. There's a lot of similarity. But at that time, it felt like New York was pretty unique in terms of diversity, in terms of transportation, ability to access things. So I'm happy I grew up during that time. It was
also a time where there was a lot of rhetoric about how dangerous New York City was. So similar, right, things come in cycles. So in the 1980s, there was a lot of concern about violence and crime and quality of life. And many of the same things that I think people talk about now.
Ana Sofia Harrison: Thank you for that. And jumping forward on this, what brought you to eventually go to law school?
Kate Mogulescu: Mostly because I didn't know what else to do after college. When I was in college, I had an internship at the Legal Aid Society's criminal defense division, which is the largest public defender in New York City and the country. And I was able to work as an investigator intern for a
summer, and I think what attracted me most to that work and to public defender work in general, was how many different people I was able to meet, and interact with, and learn about. And that was really the whole focus of the investigative internship program, was that we were investigating cases.
So we were working very, very closely with people we were representing, with their families, with people impacted by the offenses that we were investigating also. And so it just gave an opportunity to really interact with people more than any of the internships that my peers were doing at the time.
And I had been interested in criminal law for a lot of reasons. It was something that was really present in my household growing up. My father was a defense attorney.
Most of his work throughout his defense career was on political cases where, you know, the government was prosecuting someone for a criminal offense, but there was a lot of influence of politics surrounding the prosecution. And so these issues were discussed in my home, growing up in my household and
then watching policing transform in New York City.
Both in that time I was talking about during my childhood and adolescence, but really seeing by the end of the 90s, what broken windows policing and the kind of rise of NYPD as a real militaristic agency had done to the city, made me even more interested in pursuing public defense work. So I went to law
school, knowing that was what I wanted to do. I didn't think I would end up doing any other kinds of law when I went to law school.
Adam Johnson: And how do you like working at Brooklyn Law School?
Kate Mogulescu: I'm really grateful for the latitude that I'm given to develop projects and pursue kinds of work and activities that I think are important. I think there's a lot to be criticized about academic institutions in general, and particularly law school, in terms of the educational
industrial complex, how much students have to give and pay to access law school. Some of the equity issues there, and then what is valued in academic institutions doesn't always align with what my values are. And thinking about academic writing. That self perpetuating notion of what is important, and
what matters. I take issue with that. I find that too often in law schools, and legal education, like actual people, and relationships are not prioritized. So I have a problem with that. But it's a job. And I'm very grateful for that, to anyone who's listening here.
Adam Johnson: Thank you for that. And then, to backtrack a little bit, what was it like working at the Legal Aid Society of New York as a public defender?
Kate Mogulescu: I think it was at the same time, the best and worst job that I could have hoped for. The best because I couldn't see myself doing anything else. And I think, really, it's a continuation of what I was saying before just sort of being able to work so closely with people to be able
to advocate but also just to learn constantly. To expose some of the real hypocrisy and underpinnings of the criminal legal system felt important, it feels important. So that's part of some of the best parts. The worst parts are just seeing the harm that the legal system can cause over and over and over
again, and often you feel like you are not even making the smallest impact because of just how tilted the scales are. How in favor of the government and authority they are against people who are prosecuted, arrested, prosecuted.
Adam Johnson: And then, working off of that, could you tell us about your experience helping the CWP [Coalition for Women Prisoners] with strategy surrounding the DVSJA [Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act]?
Kate Mogulescu: Yeah. So when the coalition began the campaign, I was still at Legal Aid. And I was part of a team called the Exploitation Intervention Project at that time. And we were focusing our work on people who were arrested for prostitution offenses, so people who were sex workers, who
were targeted as sex workers, or people who were exploited in the commercial sex industry. The whole spectrum of people who might come into the criminal legal system by virtue of an arrest for prostitution.
And that had kind of spread, and grown into really thinking about the experience of people in commercial sex, not just for prostitution offenses, but people who were maybe facing arrest for a whole host of offenses. And within that group, again, there were gradations. There were people whose
involvement in sex work was voluntary, right? It was a choice. There were many people for whom it was a circumstance, right? And then there were many people for whom it was coerced.
And so there was this range of experiences, but for the people that were coerced, actually, for all of the people, whether it was choice, circumstance, or coercion. For all the people, what we understood was that arrest and prosecution, no matter the offense, whether it was a prostitution offense, or
something far more serious—because prostitution offenses are relatively minor in the criminal legal system—that act of arrest, prosecution, was causing even additional harm.
And then when you kind of like built that on top of—you layer that on top of any harm that people were experiencing in sex work, whether it was from purchasers of sex, whether it was from someone who might be exploiting them, right, like the harm was compounded, and the criminal legal system was making
people less safe. And it had this like, dual narrative of how much we cared about violence and exploitation and abuse. But we weren't recognizing that very experience in people who were being arrested and prosecuted. Right, so the split, the binary was incredibly clean in many people's minds of, like, victim
of crime versus perpetrator of an offense.
And we understood that to be a much more sort of complicated analysis, if it's even possible. So we were doing that work at Legal Aid, while the coalition launched the campaign for the DVSJA. And while and so there was a certain amount of synergy there, right, because the DVSJA in essence is about looking at
the circumstances that someone is in when they commit an offense, and offering a different view of culpability, of punishment, of the punitive responses that we normally see.
So during that time, the co-directors of the Women in Prison Project at the Correctional Association, Tamar Kraft-Stolar and Jaya Vasandani, who were working with the coalition, because the coalition was housed at the Correctional Association, did a lot of the drafting of the DVSJA and
started to engage in a lobbying strategy. Periodically, they would come to me with some request for feedback on where they were and where things stood, particularly when it pertained to the group of people that we were most working with, sex workers or people who are victims of human trafficking.
So we had some conversations over those years about the efforts. In every criminal legal reform, there's tremendous opposition and resistance. And there's always this kind of nagging question of exclusions or compromises. So you have this goal of what relief you want, what you want the law to do. And
then through the process that often gets whittled down through bargaining, compromises and negotiating.
And so there was a lot of thought given to what can be negotiated. I mean, ideally, nothing, but that's not reality. And if something is going to be negotiated, what could that be, that would be the least harmful to the goal?
Adam Johnson: And what years were you involved with CWP with?
Kate Mogulescu: Okay, so I would say from 2012 to 2015 or '16. I left legal aid in 2017 and came to Brooklyn Law School. I don't remember exactly, but it was probably around those years.
Adam Johnson: And do you maintain a connection with anyone at the CWP?
Kate Mogulescu: Well, as you all know, the coalition has sunsetted. But in our current collective around the DVSJA that I am a part of, the Survivors Justice Project, there are two women now who were part of the coalition on the outside fighting for the DVSJA—Anisa Sabur and Sharon White-Harrigan.
And there are a couple of women, members of our team also, who were at Bedford Hills while the coalition was doing most of its organizing, and so were drawn into little bits and pieces of what was happening at Bedford around the DVSJA that the coalition was leading. And Tamar and Jaya, of course. So
when Tamar Jaya left the Correctional Association—I'm not remembering exactly what year it was, but I could figure that out—they formed a new entity called the Women and Justice Project.
And again, like a lot of the legacy and sort of collective that was part of the coalition and the Women in Prison Project lives now in Women and Justice Project and and we work very closely with them. Survivors Justice Project actually is a program of the Women and Justice Project now. So it's all a lot
of interchangeability.
Ana Sofia Harrison: Thank you. Circling back to your growing up, I was interested in what you were talking about growing up in the 80s, and that people would speak about how dangerous New York was and things like that. Did people ever speak about the political climate, like, the conversations surrounding
incarceration in New York City? Did anything like that happen at school, or if not at school, did you ever have those conversations with friends or family?
Kate Mogulescu: With family, yes, absolutely. My household—I think my political consciousness comes out of my family, and my household, and the conversations that we had, and that goes back, you know, before even my parents were my grandparents also, with their commitment to political organizing and that discourse. I
definitely don't remember it being part of school at all. At all.
That it's an interesting question that I haven't really thought about, which is funny, because I now teach. But certainly through high school, that was not part of it. And then in college, I was able to take courses like in political science that, again, didn't really look at incarceration in
the United States, that specifically. So I would say the answer to that in terms of my school was no.
My household and family, yes. And then with friends, or my social groups, I think yes. But once we were already a little bit older, maybe in adolescence, there were a lot of people I knew who were engaging in activities that would be deemed criminal. So there was always this question of policing, and
where, you know, as kids in New York City, we did spend a lot of time outside, in parks on the street, you know, in public places.
And who was able to interact with a police officer, if we were approached or questioned or told to move along, versus who had that kind of fear of what could go wrong and what would happen? I think that was palpable, I don't know how explicit we were in our discussions about it, we just
kind of like felt it and knew who had to run from the police.
And then that segued, of course, into people, I think having more and more encounters with the criminal legal system, and people I knew ending up arrested and prosecuted in different ways. And then it became much more explicit, as part of the conversations, but we were, I think, a little bit older than
probably like our middle teenage years.
Ana Sofia Harrison: And what are your thoughts on the current climate surrounding incarceration in New York City? And how does that play into your role as a professor?
Kate Mogulescu: I think what we're seeing right now is, again, a period where that rhetoric around the safety in the city has taken a stronghold. And so there's a lot of there are a lot of discussions, I think about the feeling of safety in New York City, and people noting or remarking that
it's not—that New York feels unsafe.
And the immediate follow-up, I think, when people talk about that is the presence of people who don't have access to housing or people who have mental health needs that are going unmet, who are very visible, and that always seems to kind of ratchet up, then, the discourse around 'this city is unsafe.' And of
course, like tabloid reporting and mainstream media seem to sort of add more fuel to that fire. They're—like what I see in New York are tremendous economic disparities that really make living here easy for some people and incredibly difficult for some people.
And then the people who for whom it is easy seem to also have the most to say about kind of what is visible or you know, what they don't want to see in their world. That being said, these are all issues that don't have easy sort of solutions or easy ways, like how we collectively care for people, make sure they
have access to what they need, all those things. That wasn't your question. But that is just a separate note to say that it's complicated.
And I don't purport for it to be easy, but I think a lot of people, perhaps people who don't work in the criminal legal system or don't have people in their lives who have been impacted by the criminal legal system, I think an easy answer would be just to sort of continue or increase the number
of people facing arrest and being housed in jails or prisons to get them sort of away from a commute to work, or walk to the park, or walk to the store.
So what we've seen over the last few years has been interesting and COVID has also certainly complicated it. But we did see for a brief period of time, a decrease in the number of people in jails and prisons, number of people in jail in New York City and across the state and the number of people in prison in
the state as well that is slowly starting to tick back up. Which is concerning.
Ana Sofia Harrison: And what have been the most moving cases you have encountered in your work and what have been the most valuable lessons you have learned either in practicing law, or teaching, or both?
Kate Mogulescu: So I think a lesson just in terms of how I approach my work that has taken me too long to learn—but I'm grateful to still be learning it—is from the very beginning in law school, you're sort of taught that you have this unique knowledge. And the power that bestows on you is somehow—it's
just exceptionalized, I think. And so undoing that learning takes a long time. It shouldn't. Law school's three years, it was for me, it's not three years for everybody. Law school was three years for me.
So it shouldn't take many years to undo what you're taught and learn. But you're sort of taught that that lawyering is top-down. And that even if you go into it as a social justice lawyer, you know, and committed to certain movements or principles that you know, and somehow that like, it's not relational. It's not
about relationships. It's about knowledge that's situated in one person, or access that's situated in one person. Access is often true, but knowledge certainly isn't.
So for me, the biggest lesson over time—and I can't even articulate how—this is just my thoughts, my musings. But, that top-down lawyering, decision making and sort of knowledge being in one place, and then that operating on people. Distancing yourself and thinking about different ways to do it.
So really working in collaboration with people, as opposed to hierarchically is something that took me a while to learn. But I see how much more meaningful it is, and how much truer it is to the lip service we pay to some of these ideals and goals that bring us into work.
And then just how much more robust the experience is when you're really working as a collective, truly, without lawyers being the gatekeepers or experts where expertise is situated. So that's one thing. That's a lesson that's a long learning process. I think, with the DVSJA work that we do now,
meaning trying to breathe some life into this law that was meant to decarcerate survivors of domestic violence. It's not about one compelling case, there's so much wrong with what happens to people from the point of an offense is committed, the harm of that offense both on the people who are recognized as
victims and the person who has committed the harm.
There's no opportunity for healing at all in the process. And I am not sort of naive enough to think that the DVSJA does that. But it shines a little bit of light on what is missing from the rest of the experience. And so when you have the privilege, as I do now, of working with people who have
been incarcerated for 10, 15, 20 years, struggling to make sense of where they ended up and how it has impacted themselves and others. There is a real brutal honesty that comes at that point that is—has to be left out of everything that comes before when a person is first arrested, first facing prosecution, they
simply cannot express any of that emotion or thinking about what has happened, they're silenced.
the way the system operates. So, long winded answer to say that the most compelling part of a thing that I get to do now in this position, working under the DVSJA, is really sit with people and have real conversations about harm.
And these incredibly overused terms like remorse, and acceptance of responsibility, and what that even means, right? But like living through it, and then getting to take that and trying to convince a court or prosecutors of something, of a way of looking at things differently. I think it's a real
gift. I feel pretty lucky to be able to do that.
Ana Sofia Harrison: Have you faced any challenges? I mean, I'm sure you have, in your work?
Kate Mogulescu: Oh, what challenges? What are you talking about? [sarcastic]
Ana Sofia Harrison: If there's any specific moments where you really felt challenged or pushed to really think in a different way or have to really fight for something that you believed in that maybe no one else did in the courtroom?
Kate Mogulescu: I think the challenge of trying to use the DVSJA and use it to get people out of prison, is that the view of people, once they are arrested and identified as a criminal, it takes a really strong hold. And so trying to disturb that view, anything that you do to try to disturb that
view, faces a lot of resistance. And so in individual instances, hearing from courts and prosecutors, like, how entrenched their view of people are, how unmovable they are, how unwilling to consider new information or just sort of growth over time.
I have to think of a situation where we like really had to fight. There are a bunch of them. We do it all the time, but it's not like the courtroom, movie version of this, where we get up and make an impassioned argument, and everyone is in tears, and we win, and we prevail. Like, it's much more
subtle than that. And it's exhausting, quite frankly, it's about having repeated conversations with a prosecutor who simply does not see the person that you are working with as a human being—just refuses.
And having to chip away at that, and chip away at that, and engage in some real code-switching to do it, to even do the pleasantries in the phone call because that's where power is situated. The person that you're trying to convince has the power—if they agree with you, the person you're working
with who has been in prison is coming home. So what do you do in that moment? You twist yourself into knots trying to have any kind of human connection. So it's the small talk, it's the weather, it's the sports, right?
Like, the things that are so gross when you're actually talking about someone sitting in prison, that they don't believe is a human being, but you do this and chip away, chip away, chip away, and I find that to be incredibly challenging. I often say when I'm working with someone, we go into a courtroom,
you're gonna see me smile so big, you're gonna see I'm going to be trying to try to crack jokes, I'm going to try to get in there and permeate. And I want you to understand why I'm doing it. I'm not doing it because I am on that side.
I am not on that side, but I'm doing that for access. I'm trying to figure out, where are there any points that might help get them? So I think that's really hard. I actually think I feel more tired after those kinds of interactions where you're just really having to bring someone along, or try to
bring someone along, than I am that if it was like what you see on TV or Law and Order where it's like one dramatic courtroom scene and you're done.
Ana Sofia Harrison: And can you speak more on the general impact of the DVSJA?
Kate Mogulescu: So the law was enacted in 2019, as you all know, and we formed the Survivors Justice Project in 2020, to try to make sure that it was implemented in the way that it had been intended. So there's two pieces to the DVSJA. The first is for people who were charged with offenses that were
And this is slower to develop, but there have been a few instances now of people using the law to avoid incredibly long prison sentences. So that is a success. There's a lot more work that needs to happen there. That is a success. The second part of the law is that people whose offenses were committed before
the law went into effect, have the ability to seek re-sentencing. So people who are already sentenced, already serving sentences can go back in and that's where we've been focusing for the last several years.
And to date, as of today, 52 people have been re-sentenced under the DVSJA. Some people's first reaction is: that's not enough. Which is true, given the number of people that are in prison in New York State, but 52 people is significant. Particularly given COVID and how that had really slowed things
down in the legal system such that, you know, bringing cases was incredibly challenging and even just accessing and being in communication with people in prison was challenging during that time.
committed after August 2019. They must make a DVSJA application or ask for a DVSJA sentence at the time of sentencing. They can't go back after the fact and seek it later on. So trying to make sure that, you know, defenders, judges, every—prosecutors know about this, even, has been one thing.
So 52 people re-sentenced, hundreds of years of incarceration saved, avoided, really, if they had been sentenced under the DVSJA initially, but also from what could have been their earliest possible release date. I mean, that's significant, as well. And what we're seeing about the law,
which is a good thing, is it was intended to recognize circumstances of domestic violence broader than just intimate partner abuse. So it's about family violence, right? It's about parents, it's about siblings.
It's about the many ways in which people can experience abuse from a family member that isn't just an intimate partner. Not to be dismissive of intimate partner violence, but just to say that there are many more experiences that the law recognizes, and we're actually seeing that, we're seeing that
play out through who is getting relief through the law. Other experiences are being recognized, particularly a number of people who've committed homicides of their own parent or step-parent.
Young people. We've seen a number of those cases, we've seen a number of cases where the person that was harmed in the offense was not the abuser themselves, but actually someone who was the victim of a robbery or, you know, something unrelated to the abuse, but recognizing how coercion can
compel and cause people to be involved in criminal offenses other than just fighting back against an abuser, which is what first comes to mind with most for most people. So I think seeing that play out, has shown some of the law's potential and been a success so far.
Ana Sofia Harrison: Amazing, yeah. And what are your hopes for incarcerated women in New York City, in the future, or incarcerated people generally?
Kate Mogulescu: My hope is that we don't have incarcerated people in New York City, New York state, in this country, in the future. I know that seems a very long way off. For a moment, like I said, a few years ago, it seemed like we were sort of moving in that direction. I don't know where we're moving
now. I know that the conditions of incarceration in jails across this country are abysmal. So if people are incarcerated, do we fight to make those jails better? I don't know.
Like, it's a real question people are grappling with. Do we say people in jail should have medical care should have access to what they need? Yes, except that are we sort of making it palatable to continue to have people incarcerated? I think also, though, one of the things about the coalition and about
the DVSJA in particular, is recognizing the organizing and community that is built in these carceral institutions, these really harmful, oppressive institutions, there's this organizing that happens there.
I know this is, like, maybe even the focus of your project! So that people have that opportunity to organize. It is unfortunate that for many people, that is the first time that they're in a space, where they're actually able to connect and see their own power for advocacy, but it happens. And
so, again, if jails and prisons exist, which how do you both abolish and make sure they don't exist, but then while they're still existing, make sure that they are as least harmful as possible, that people continue to organize inside.
One of the things that happens at Bedford, historically and to this day, which is the maximum security women's prison in New York state, is there's a lot of caretaking. And there's a lot of caretaking for people for whom that there was an absence of caretaking in their lives. Do you want people to have to go to
prison for that? No. But recognizing that, it's important.
Ana Sofia Harrison: And also, just to circle back, how did you initially connect with the CWP?
Kate Mogulescu: Yeah, it was through the the co-directors of the Women in Prison Project at the Correctional Association, Tamar and Jaya. I grew up with Tamar. So I've known Tamar almost my whole life. And I went to an event. And again, I'm not going to remember the year, it was pretty early on in the DVSJA
campaign. And Kim Dadou Brown spoke. And I was there and I was able to reconnect with Tamar. And so I think from that point on, we were in conversation.
Ana Sofia Harrison: And do you have any last kind of thoughts or just, or comments about your work? Or anything that you feel was missed?
Kate Mogulescu: I don't know the answer to that. So maybe Adam or Ava? I don't know if anyone else has other questions. But I think the oral history, the history of preserving the history of the coalition is important for the point I guess I was just trying to make which is to recognize the organizing that has happened
both inside and outside, that often goes overlooked. Particularly the DVSJA is almost an example, that was the fight for so many years to get the DVSJA passed, among other things that the coalition was working on as well. And then the law gets passed.
And that part almost gets erased from memory, because then the lawyers move in. And then it's about bringing cases and bringing applications and decisions and judges and so like part of our work at SJP has been to kind of like, pump the brakes a little bit and say, 'No, like, we have to build this and the
legacy of the organizing that went into it.
That made it possible.' And so I'm glad that you, that this project, is actually taking the time to preserve that history. I don't think the coalition is the only example of organizing, particularly women organizing inside and outside, but it's a strong one, it's an important one. So, thanks for the work
that you're doing.
Ana Sofia Harrison: Another question would be, have you witnessed any other forms of organizing that have stood out in similar ways that the CWP does?
Kate Mogulescu: Well, now you have the National Council, right, of formerly incarcerated women and girls, which is doing a lot of national organizing around the issue of women's incarceration. So I think that's like something that, smaller movements like the coalition over time, feed into, then, the
creation of these larger entities. Because now the National Council is unbelievably strong and present.
But you see it now also in the way legislative efforts are kind of unfolding across the country, like I'm thinking of Louisiana right now, which is working on a campaign similar to the DVSJA, and their notion of it being led by currently and formerly incarcerated women comes from this. So Louisiana certainly is
an example, Connecticut's another example, I mean, there are examples all over.
And then, not even having to do with a particular legislative advocacy, but just kind of the organizing that happens inside prisons, on a daily basis around conditions, around things that matter to people and families, how people access visits, packages, what's available in terms of food, all of that, any
attention that's paid to that, what people are paid for work they do in prison, or not paid. All of that comes from organizing inside. So I think there are many examples.
Ana Sofia Harrison: Adam or Ava do you have any other questions?
Adam Johnson: I don't have any other questions, but thank you for sharing all of that.
Kate Mogulescu: Thanks for listening.
Ana Sofia Harrison: Yeah, thank you so much. It really was great to hear your perspective and about all that you've thought about and contributed to the CWP.
Kate Mogulescu: Thank you all. Let me know if there's anything else I can do.
Ana Sofia Harrison: Thank you, yes. We'll be in touch with a transcript, and everything will send you a copy and you can look over it.
Kate Mogulescu: Always an incredibly mortifying process, reading. Always. But thank you.
Ana Sofia Harrison: Understand, totally. Yeah. Thank you.
Kate Mogulescu: Okay. All right. Take care, everybody.