What I Learned About Power From Inside a Federal Prison
I want to be precise about what I mean by inside.
For almost two years, I served as an Attorney-Advisor with the U.S. Department of Justice — Bureau of Prisons, as agency counsel and a federally certified law enforcement officer for four federal correctional institutions across the Central District of California. I advised executive staff on constitutional law, civil rights claims, operational risk, and investigations involving the FBI, the DEA, and the U.S. Attorney's Office.
I was not incarcerated. I was the attorney. But I was inside the institution in a way that very few people outside of law enforcement ever are — close enough to understand how these places actually work, how decisions get made, and what they cost the people living inside them. From successfully completing the academy in Glynco, GA; to conducting pat searches, and everything in between.
What I learned about power in that role changed how I think about everything I do.
Power is never where the org chart says it is.
The formal hierarchy tells one story. The informal one — who controls information, who has relationships with external authorities, who can slow a decision down or accelerate it — tells a completely different one. The most effective people inside any institution, including the most constrained ones, understand this distinction and operate accordingly. I have carried this observation into every boardroom, donor meeting, and strategy session since.
Narrative controls reality in ways that legal frameworks alone cannot.
I watched the same set of facts produce completely different outcomes depending on how they were framed, by whom, and in what context. The legal standard mattered. The story mattered more. As attorneys inside this system, it was and is imperative to keep balance in a justice system that can feel so fickle. Balancing the rights for all parties. Building relationships mattered - with all stakeholders in and out of the institutions. The narrative mattered as much as the systems we create. This is not cynicism — it is an observation about how human institutions actually function. The organizations that understand this use narrative as a strategic tool. The ones that don't wonder why their strongest arguments aren't landing. It was the tool we used most when de-escalating various scenarios within the prisons and helped create rapport across the board and at all levels.
The people most harmed by broken systems are almost always the ones with the least access to the language and infrastructure that would allow them to navigate them.
This is not an accident. It is a design feature. And it is the most important reason I believe that senior legal and strategic counsel is not a luxury for well-resourced organizations. It is a justice issue.
I had come to the DOJ from Immigrant Defenders Law Center, where I represented unaccompanied minors in deportation defense — children navigating one of the most adversarial legal systems in the country, often without family, often without language, always without power. The through-line between those two roles is not obvious on a resume. It is completely obvious to me.
In both contexts I was watching what happens when people and organizations encounter systems that were not designed for them and do not have the counsel, the narrative infrastructure, or the institutional relationships to navigate those systems effectively. The consequences are not abstract. They are lives, missions, and organizations that deserved better and didn't get it.
That is the gap Ideate Legal was built to close.
Not because legal services are scarce — they are not. But because senior strategic counsel that combines legal fluency with narrative expertise, institutional knowledge, and real relationships across sectors is extraordinarily rare. Most organizations never have access to it. The ones that do move differently.
I built Ideate Legal and The Civic Room because I have been inside enough rooms — federal institutions, immigration courtrooms, nonprofit boardrooms, startup war rooms, donor cultivation events, and high-profile panels — to understand what it actually takes to build power from any of them.
The organizations I work with are trying to change things that matter. I know what they are up against.
And I know how to help.
Devika Tandon is the Founder and Managing Partner of Ideate Legal and The Civic Room. She advises mission-driven organizations, founders, and executives at the intersection of law, strategy, and narrative.
Connect with Devika → https://www.ideate.legal/connect