Anna Marguleas

Anna first stepped foot inside of a detention center when she was a freshman at Georgetown University. Through Georgetown’s Prison Outreach Program, Anna was able to facilitate and participate in creative writing workshops with incarcerated men and women on a weekly basis. She describes these experiences as “life-changing,” saying that they ultimately gave rise to her insatiable passion for criminal justice and prison reform.

Now graduated from Georgetown University with major in English and double-minor in Government and Justice and Peace Studies, Anna spent her fourth year with the Prison Outreach and has spent two years as the Creative Writing program coordinator for Alexandria Detention Center. Through these first-hand experiences, she has learned the importance of altering the stigmatization of incarcerated individuals, who she says are “too often undervalued and ignored by society.” 

Anna discusses the role of misconceptions in fueling peoples’ neglect of those who are incarcerated. “People often preach about the importance of caring for the underprivileged and the misunderstood, yet turn a blind eye –– perhaps out of discomfort or a lack of awareness –– to the horrific conditions of America’s criminal justice system.”

In the spring, Anna was also a student in Marc Howard’s and Marty Tankleff’s “Making an Exoneree course,” in which students reinvestigate wrongful conviction cases in hopes of achieving an exoneration. It was through this experience that she became familiar with Faarooq Mu’min Mansour and his case. While she had been proximate to the criminal justice system and its injustices before, this class allowed her to gain a deeply nuanced, personal perspective that further encouraged her drive for prison reform. “My eyes cannot be shut to the inequities that I have witnessed,” she says.

Weekly calls with Faarooq and visits to meet him and his family in person strengthened her belief in his innocence and her commitment to advocating for the neglected humanity of those who are incarcerated. Anna describes Faarooq as “gentle and introverted –– a deeply talented writer, an avid reader, and a grounded, spiritual person.”   

Impassioned by Faarooq and her experiences with the legal system, Anna intends to continue her work toward the pursuit of justice and prison reform.