CJCJ Team Member Spotlight: Christian Mendoza, Policy & Research

We are pleased to introduce a key contributor to this work, our policy team intern Christian Mendoza. Not only is Christian supporting us currently as a policy intern, he is also graduate of the Next Generation Fellowship. Thank you Christian for the skills and passion you bring to our policy team. We are lucky to work with you!

Our policy advocacy, research, and reports help to transform community safety. We inform policy makers, journalists, researchers, practitioners, and the public about how to upend the cycle of incarceration. CJCJ also offers technical assistance supporting national, state, and local jurisdictions seeking to improve their criminal and juvenile justice systems.

Name & PGP: Hi everyone! My name is Christian Mendoza, he/​him/​his

Job Title: Policy Intern. I provide critical support to CJCJ’s policy team. This includes tracking dozens of justice-related bills in the California State Legislature, from their introduction to potential adoption. I run our weekly legislative meetings to decide the agency’s position on these state bills. In these meetings, I recommend positions that align with CJCJ’s mission. Plus, I update everyone on the changing status of these priority bills as they wind through the legislative process. Following these discussions, I will help develop CJCJ’s position letters to the state legislature on whether we support or oppose these bills. I have also met with community organizers and policymakers in Sacramento to discuss CJCJ’s priorities for justice. Finally, I support all aspects of CJCJ’s publications, from research and data analysis to writing my perspective on fighting for justice in California and nationally.

Behind the scenes fact about you: I love physical media; I have hundreds of vinyl and CDs that I’m constantly spinning, as well as a growing collection of books (non-fiction and food related books are my favorite) and DVDs (mostly horror).

How would you describe your job to a friend? In a specific, technical sense: I assist CJCJ and its affiliates in promoting research and policies that heal, rehabilitate, and uplift members of the community that are often cast aside and looked down upon. In a broader, more general sense: I try to shape the world around me to be a more thoughtful, more empathetic place for my family and my community.

Why is this work important to you? This work is so important to me because I represent my community and advocate for a better future for us all. I use my experiences, and the collective experiences of family members before me, to provide aid and social mobility to others.

Dreaming out loud: If I were given unlimited funds to build out part of my program, I would set up an ​“all in one” non-profit organization that helps recent immigrants and their families on the path to citizenship. It would provide informationals guiding people through the citizenship process; there would be workshops about navigating life while on the path to citizenship, including providing potential employment opportunities, finding housing/​shelter, and seeking various forms of available/​applicable government assistance; there would be free/​affordable legal services for immigrants in need of navigating the law more thoroughly; to top it off, we would provide counseling and therapy to immigrants fleeing (or who have experienced) violent, traumatic, or harrowing situations such as war, domestic abuse, and even after surviving the journey across the border itself. Being a child of 2 immigrants myself, I remember wishing at multiple points in life that we had access to help like this, or that other much needed services were easy to seek out. Immigrants are the backbone of this country, and we should give them the time and assistance that such a role entails.


Learn more about CJCJ’s policy team and its research on our website.