U.S Marshals Groom the Next Generation of Law Enforcement

For interns pursuing majors in Law and Criminal Justice, it doesn’t get much more immersive than spending 15 weeks with the U.S Marshals Service.

TWC has partnered with the Marshals Service for more than two decades, making the agency one of TWC’s longest-serving internship sites. The Marshals serve one of the most critical public safety missions in American law enforcement: hunting down fugitives and protecting servants of the criminal justice system. Two spring 2015 students – Kevin Diamond and Elizabeth McPhillips – shed light on their Marshals internship experiences and their motivations for pursuing careers in law enforcement.

For McPhillips, a student at Thomas College in Maine, the Marshals internship marked another step toward full induction into the field; she serves as a summer reserve police officer in her hometown of Billerica, Mass. Despite her experience, even she found herself surprised when she set foot in Marshals headquarters on the first day of her internship.

“There’s a lot more going on here than I would have ever realized,” McPhillips said. “Most people assume that the Marshals are just hunting down fugitives all day, but the cross-departmental cooperation and planning that it takes to enforce the law is incredible.”

Diamond, who graduated this spring from Stockton University in New Jersey, took the Marshals internship hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps as a law enforcement officer. But his father wasn’t the only force driving his desire to serve and protect.

“I watched other people my age throw their lives away by making bad decisions and succumbing to destructive influences,” Diamond said. “I was lucky enough to have very positive influences in my life, and now I’m in a position where I can make a real, positive impact on people in my criminal justice career.”

Mark Abe, assistant chief of the Information Management Unit at the Marshals Service, regularly supervises TWC interns. Given the brevity – and intensity – of a D.C. internship, Abe credits the TWC academic internship program’s rigorous structure with providing optimal experiences and outcomes for its students.

“I appreciate the in-depth programming and structure TWC provides so that each intern has a rich experience and oversight. This ensures that the internship itself stays on track,” Abe said. “Our interns play a big role in our organization, including participating in high-level meetings and analyzing hundreds of long-standing fugitive cases. And they really made an impact this semester.”

Hundreds of internship sites like the U.S. Marshals Service benefit from TWC’s focus on supporting interns with top-notch professional development programming. TWC also provides employers a tool to measure the effectiveness of their own internship programs.

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About the Author

The Washington Center is the largest and most established student internship program in Washington, D.C. Since our founding, we've helped more than 60,000 individuals from across the U.S. and around the globe expand their academic pursuits into rewarding jobs and careers. We use our scale and expertise to deliver solutions that open career pathways for learners, solve recruitment challenges for employers, while helping create greater access, equity, advancement and representation.

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