How Filmmaking Taught Me to Advocate for Incarcerated Persons featuring Katherin Hervey

If you think having a law degree limits your creativity you haven’t met Katherin Hervey.  Katherin has worked as a magazine editor, a public defender, a film enthusiast, a holistic artist, a director, and filmmaker.  

After studying cross-cultural communications, which was a self-designed major at the University of Washington, Katherin found that curating her own degree was her way of diving into her interests.  Katherin was able to take women's studies courses, ethnicity, psychology and  sociology courses which motivated Katherin to pick up a camera.

Katherin Hervey attended law school at Loyola- Los Angeles and later became a public defender.  Katherin found the tradition, patriarchy, and hierarchical processes of law school to be stifling, and Katherin rebelled against most of what she saw in law school.  Law school inspired Katherin to wonder about the people behind the case law and find her own way to tell stories of others.  

Katherin’s interest in the background stories combined with her experiences as a public defender in California motivated Katherin to go behind the prison walls to share the stories of men on death row. Katherin wants you to know that the stories of the men behind the walls could be you, these men could be your brothers, uncles, or nephews.  

Katherin used language and terminology learned from being a public defender while appealing to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to gain access to the men inside.  Katherin’s mission in filming ‘The Prison Within’ is to show the empathy of the men behind the walls; show the work that these men are completing and showing their humanity.  Every person is on a parallel journey to healing and these men are not unlike the lives of those who live the outside of the walls.

Although Katherin believes that she would have taken a creative path regardless of attending law school, Katherin Hervey knows that she would not have created a project like ‘The Prison Within’ had she never attended law school. 

Learn more about ‘The Prison Within’ at theprisonwithin.org, and watch the film ‘The Prison Within’ on Tubi, Amazon Prime, iTunes, and Google Play.

Katherin Hervey is licensed in California.  Connect with Katherin Hervey on Instagram @theprisonwithin.

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