Decarcerating America

by Ernest Drucker

  Carlos E. Monteiro is a senior research associate at the Institute on Race and Justice at Northeastern University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. He serves as co-project director for a National Institute of Justice-funded research project examining the sources and impacts of stress in the lives of correctional officers. He lives in Massachusetts.

  Judith A. Greene’s essays and articles on criminal sentencing issues, police practices, and correctional policy have been published in numerous books, as well as in national and international journals, and her work has been cited in outlets including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and National Public Radio. She is a co-founder of Justice Strategies and has been a Soros Senior Justice Fellow, a research associate for the RAND Corporation, a senior research fellow at the University of Minnesota Law School, director of the State-Centered Program for the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, and the Vera Institute of Justice. She lives in New York.

  Vincent Schiraldi is a senior research fellow directing the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School. Formerly, Schiraldi worked as the founder of the Justice Policy Institute think tank, director of the juvenile corrections in Washington, D.C., commissioner of the New York City Department of Probation, and most recently as senior advisor to the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. He lives in Massachusetts.

  Michael Romano is the director and founder of the Three Strikes Project at Stanford Law School. As counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Michael co-authored two successful California statewide ballot measures, the Three Strikes Reform Act of 2012 (“Proposition 36”) and the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act of 2014 (“Proposition 47”), which provided for the release of over 10,000 nonviolent prisoners. Romano was recognized by the Obama administration as a “Champion of Change” in 2016, and was named one of California’s top lawyers in 2009. He has been profiled in numerous outlets, including the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Economist, and in the PBS feature documentary The Return. He was a John Knight Fellow at Yale Law School and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He lives in California.

  Judge Robert Sweet is currently a senior United States federal judge serving on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. With co-author Edward A. Harris he contributed a chapter to Jefferson Fish’s book How to Legalize Drugs. Sweet is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and serves on its advisory board. He lives in New York

  James Thompson is a litigation associate at Morrison Foerster, LLP, practicing out of the New York office. Prior to joining the firm, James served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert W. Sweet of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

  Robin Steinberg is CEO of The Bail Project and director of Still She Rises. She was a founder of The Bronx Defenders, where she developed a client-centered model of public defense that uses interdisciplinary teams of advocates to address both the underlying causes and the collateral consequences of criminal justice involvement. Steinberg is a frequent commentator on local and national media outlets and has been honored by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association and the New York Bar Association. She was awarded Harvard Law School’s Wasserstein Fellowship and is currently a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School in New York.

  Skylar Albertson was previously Assistant to the Director at the Bronx Defenders, and is now studying for his JD at Yale Law School.

  Rachel Maremont has been an intern at the Bell Policy Center, a progressive research and policy think tank in Denver, Colorado; the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, which provides legal representation to unaccompanied minors in immigration proceedings; and the Foundation for Sustainable Development in Cochabamba, Bolivia. She lives in New York.

  gabriel sayegh is the co-founder and co-director of the Katal Center for Health, Equity, and Justice. He was a former managing director of policy at the Drug Policy Alliance. He has written for publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Vice, New York Daily News, New York Post, Associated Press, the Huffington Post, the Village Voice, Gawker, and has appeared in news outlets including CBS, NBC, Fox, and the BBC. He lives in Brooklyn.

  Danielle Sered is the founder of Common Justice. She and her work have been featured in the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Atlantic Magazine Summit on Race and Justice, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, NPR, and more. Danielle sits on the advisory council to the New York State Office of Victims Services, the diversity advisory committee to the federal Office for Victims of Crime, the New York State Governor’s Council on Reentry and Community Reintegration, and the advisory board to the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. Common Justice received the Award for Innovation in Victim Services from Attorney General Holder and the federal Office for Victims of Crime. She is a Rhodes Scholar and the author of The Other Side of Harm: Addressing Disparities in our Responses to Violence, Expanding the Reach of Victim Services, and Accounting for Violence: How to Increase Safety and Reduce Our Failed Reliance on Mass Incarceration.

  Elizabeth Gaynes is the executive director of the Osborne Association. She designed FamilyWorks, the first comprehensive parenting program in a men’s state prison. She was co-chair of the reentry working group for the NYC Mayor’s Task Force on Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice and serves on the New York State Council on Community Re-entry and Reintegration. She was on the steering committee of New York’s Aging Reentry Task Force and was an advisor to Sesame Street Workshop in the development of their award-winning “Little Children Big Challenges: Incarceration” materials. In 2013, Gaines was recognized by the White House as a “Champion of Change” on behalf of Children of Incarcerated Parents, and she now serves as an advisor to the International Association of Chiefs of Police on the model protocol for safeguarding children at the time of a parent’s arrest. She lives in New York.

  Tanya Krupat is the program director of the New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents, Osborne Association. She lives in New York.

  Ross MacDonald is the chief of medicine for Health + Hospitals Correctional Health Services in New York City, overseeing medical care for the city jail system, including Rikers Island.

  Homer Venters is medical director and assistant commissioner of Correctional Health Services, and a faculty member at the NYU Center for Survivors of Torture, and a co-chair of a federal health advisory group on medical care for detainees. He has written widely and testified before Congress on these topics. He lives in New York.

  Mujahid Farid is the lead organizer for the Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) Campaign. When Farid was twenty-eight years old, he was sentenced to fifteen years to life for attempted murder. He was denied parole nine times, which ultimately added eighteen years to his incarceration. While confined, Farid earned four college degrees including two masters. Farid was part of a trio that created and proposed PEPA, the first HIV/AIDS peer education program in New York State prisons, and since his release, Farid has initiated the RAPP Campaign and the Rise and Shine Small Business Coalition. In 2013 Farid was an Open Society Soros Justice Fellow and was awarded a joint New York State legislative commendation for his community work and a Citizens Against Recidivism, Inc., award for social activism. He lives in New York.

  Laura Whitehorn is a former political prisoner and is currently a Senior Editor at POZ Magazine in New York City. She is also a member of the New York State taskforce on political prisoners.

  Daliah Heller is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the City University of New York. Previously, she served as assistant commissioner for the Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Use Prevention, Care, and Treatment, at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and as the director of harm reduction in the Department’s Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control. Before joining government, she built and led one of the country’s leading harm reduction service
organizations, based in the South Bronx. She lives in New York

  Kathy Boudin is the co-director and co-founder of the Center for Justice at Columbia University. She is an adjunct lecturer at Columbia School of Social Work where she has been the Director of the Criminal Justice Initiative, Supporting Children Families and Communities. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Harvard Education Review and Journal of Corrections Education among other outlets and she is editor and co-author of the book, Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum Security Prison.

  Jeannie Little is the executive director of the Center for Harm Reduction Therapy. She developed the harm reduction therapy group model for the Department of Veterans Affairs and has trained therapists nationally and abroad. She teaches and consults with staff in outpatient clinics, drop-in centers, and supportive housing programs. She lives in California.

  Jenifer Talley is an assistant professor and assistant director of clinical training at the New School for Social Research and assistant director of the Concentration in Mental Health and Substance Abuse Counseling. She lives in New York

  Scott Kellogg is a clinical assistant professor of psychology at New York University.

  Maurice Byrd is a harm reduction therapist who works in the Center for Harm Reduction’s private practice and in community services with runaway youth. He is also a certified anger management facilitator. He lives in California.

  Sheila Vakharia is a faculty member at Long Island University and a social worker at a grassroots HIV/AIDS and homelessness advocacy organization in Manhattan, where she provides harm reduction-based substance use counseling.

  Eric Lotke is an author, activist and scholar whose legal advocacy includes groundbreaking lawsuits against private prison companies and over the exploitative cost of phone calls from prison.. His books include Making Manna, The Real War on Crime, and 2044: The Problem Isn’t Big Brother, It’s Big Brother, Inc.

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