DJC is founded on the belief that we cannot build cities that work for everyone without remedying the impacts of mass incarceration and transforming our justice system. We are looking for creative, experienced professionals to support our mission to deliver community lawyering services, create economic opportunities, and promote just cities.
We strongly encourage people of color, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and individuals with past involvement in the criminal punishment system or who have loved ones currently or formerly in the criminal punishment system to apply.
DJC accepts a limited number of externs and fellows each year to learn alongside and contribute to our legal, policy, operations, and community-based teams.
This is a chance to be in the work. People who join us build real skills, ask better questions, and see up close how legal and policy tools are used to support people and fight for change. You will not be watching from the sidelines. You will learn by doing, and you will leave sharper than you came.
We accept proposals from individuals receiving academic credit or supported through school-based or externally funded fellowships.
We welcome externship and fellowship projects and proposals with interests and/or experience in:
DJC is a place to build real skills, deepen your analysis, and learn through work that matters. If you’re pursuing credit or fellowship support and want to learn in a serious, movement-focused legal and policy setting, Submit Your Proposal. We review submissions on a rolling basis and follow up when there’s alignment with our team’s focus and capacity.
Our first summer fellows program began with a June 2019 opening retreat in Miami where interns were introduced to the work of the Detroit Justice Center, Law 4 Black Lives, and Community Justice Project . Interns were engaged in a 10-week curriculum of political education, readings, seminars, and reflections. They worked alongside attorneys within our organizations on a varied caseload, including advocacy, direct representation, litigation, and research. While in Detroit, our interns encountered the structural inequity of the justice system, while supporting our team in fighting tax foreclosure and gentrification, building community land trusts and worker cooperatives, challenging water shutoffs, blocking new jail construction, fighting for bail reform, and implementing new restorative justice programs. Interns were also guided to develop and deepen their understanding of movement lawyering through a curriculum of weekly readings, seminars, and reflections.
This shared program was designed to be more than an internship. As our organizations grow, we are building a pipeline for new movement lawyers to be equipped to fight alongside organizers at local and national levels.
— Nick Aquinos, 2021 Intern
— Ashley Moton, 2020 Intern
— Taylor Dodson, 2019 Intern
— Shirley Rivas, 2019 Intern
— ADELINE NAVARRO, 2025 Intern
— Vishal Reddy, 2019 Intern
— Lauryn Thomas, 2025 Intern
The Detroit Justice Center believes that creativity and art are essential to imagining and building a world where every human life is valued with equal care and consideration and disposing of people is no longer considered justice. As attorneys and advocates, we are inundated by words, concepts, figures, and statistics that are intended to demonstrate the possibility of abolition and create ever tighter coalitions to express its urgency. Data in many ways is the currency of social justice and economic equity, but it cannot evoke the sense of possibility, wonder, and imagination that art and media can.
Every year since 2020, the Detroit Justice Center has been asking Wayne County artists to submit project proposals that grapple with the question:
“What does a world without police and incarceration look like?”
What would it feel like to exist in a world without the police and incarceration, without jails, prisons, and detention centers? What would be the textures and sensations of that world? What patterns of interactions and relationships would transform for the communities that would be born as we realize these demands of structural change?
Inspired by Detroit’s long history of arts and activism, we look to artists to dream of new worlds and engage our community in visioning safety without punishment. Beginning in 2026, we are expanding our artist residency! We will be offering two different residencies open to artists living in the state of Michigan. The first is specifically for formerly incarcerated artists in Michigan, and another that is open to all artists. Applications for the formerly incarcerated artist residency open January 2nd, 2026, and will close February 15th, 2026. Applications for the second residency will open in July 2026.
Applicants may work in any artistic medium and may submit up to five work samples as part of the application process. We ask that applicants who use time-based mediums (such as dance, music, and video) limit their work samples to no more than 20 minutes total. Anyone submitting written work is asked to limit their work sample to no more than 15 pages total.
The artist whose project is chosen by our panelists will receive $20,000 and will have until March 2027 to create and execute the proposed project. Applications close on 2/15/2026.
We strongly encourage people of color, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and individuals with past involvement in the criminal punishment system or who have loved ones currently or formerly in the criminal punishment system to apply.