Research Report: Local Criminal Justice 2011

Neelum Arya is the Director of Research and Policy for Campaign for Youth Justice. A lawyer and resident of Southeast Washington DC, was named Volunteer of the Year by the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services in 2006, Neelum Arya, was named one of the 2004 Open Society Institute Soros Justice Fellows. Ms. Arya’s Soros Justice Fellows project addressed the rising incarceration rates of youth in adult facilities in California. The Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention Act, known as Proposition 21, was a voter initiative that passed in March 2000. Proposition 21 funnels youth into the adult criminal justice system by authorizing prosecutors to directly file charges in the adult system, as well as expanding the circumstances for which youth may be prosecuted as adults. Ms. Arya’s project sought to combat the effect of these policies. Through investigation, direct legal advocacy, and mobilizing youth, their families, and community advocates, Ms. Arya’s project was created to prevent the incarceration of youth in adult institutions, improve the conditions of confinement for youth currently housed in these facilities, and mobilize and influence public and policymakers opinions on juveniles tried as adults.

David Cole teaches constitutional law, national security, and criminal justice at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also a volunteer attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, and a commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He has been published widely in law journals and the popular press, including the Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Stanford Law Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of six books. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, published in 2007, and co-authored with Jules Lobel, won the Palmer Civil Liberties Prize for best book on national security and civil liberties. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism, received the American Book Award in 2004. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review, and best book on an issue of national policy in 1999 by the American Political Science Association. His most recent book is The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable (2009).

Michele Deitch is an attorney with over 23 years of experience working on criminal justice policy issues with state and local government officials, corrections officials, judges, and advocates. She teaches criminal justice and juvenile justice policy at the LBJ School and at the Law School. She was awarded a 2005-06 Soros Senior Justice Fellowship by the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation, one of the most prestigious prizes for individuals working on criminal justice policy reform. Her areas of specialty include independent oversight of correctional institutions, institutional reform litigation, prison conditions and management, prison and jail overcrowding, prison privatization, and juveniles in adult court. She holds a J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School, an M.Sc. in psychology (with a specialization in criminology) from Oxford University (Balliol College), and a B.A. with honors from Amherst College. Since 1993, Deitch has served as an independent consultant to state and local policy-makers and agency officials around the country on a wide range of corrections and sentencing issues. She recently served for three years as Reporter to the American Bar Association Task Force that drafted proposed national standards on the treatment of prisoners. She also served on the Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Texas Youth Commission, a panel appointed to recommend changes to the Texas juvenile justice system in the wake of high-profile scandals involving the statewide juvenile corrections agency. Previously, she held some key positions with the Texas Legislature, including serving as General Counsel to the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee and as the Policy Director of the Texas Punishment Standards Commission. Working in those posts, she was involved with virtually every major criminal justice policy initiative considered by state officials in Texas in the early 1990s. During the late 1980s, Deitch was appointed by Judge William Wayne Justice as a monitor of conditions in the Texas prison system, as part of the landmark Ruiz prison reform lawsuit.

Jamie Fellner specializes in US criminal justice issues, including prison conditions, the incarceration of the mentally ill, sentencing, the death penalty, and drug law enforcement. From 2001 to 2007, she was the first director of Human Rights Watch's US program, supervising research and advocacy on US counterterrorism policies, immigration, and the criminal justice system. Previous positions with Human Rights Watch include working as Associate Counsel and as a researcher and advocate for the Americas division. In addition, Fellner has worked for several human rights and social justice organizations and as a litigator. She earned a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley and completed doctoral studies in Latin American History at Stanford University. Fellner speaks Spanish.

Sheri Lynn Johnson is an expert on the interface of race and issues in criminal procedure, and the Assistant Director of the Cornell Death Penalty project, an initiative to foster empirical scholarship on the death penalty, offer students an opportunity to work with practitioners on death penalty cases, and to provide information and assistance for death penalty lawyers. After her graduation from Yale Law School in 1979, Professor Johnson worked for a year in the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the New York Legal Aid Society, and then joined the Cornell Law School Faculty in 1981. Professor Johnson co-founded the Cornell Death Penalty Project in 1993. She currently teaches constitutional and criminal law, and supervises the post-conviction litigation and capital trial clinics.

Lora Krsulich is a Policy Analyst in the Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit at the Vera Institute of Justice. The Vera Institute of Justice combines expertise in research, demonstration projects, and technical assistance to help leaders in government and civil society improve the systems people rely on for justice and safety. Vera is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit center for justice policy and practice, with offices in New York City, Washington, DC, and New Orleans. Our projects and reform initiatives, typically conducted in partnership with local, state, or national officials, are located across the United States and around the world.

Valerie Levshin is the Policy Analyst at the Vera Institute of Justice. The Vera Institute of Justice combines expertise in research, demonstration projects, and technical assistance to help leaders in government and civil society improve the systems people rely on for justice and safety. She was previously the Project Associate at the NYC Department of Probation, tutor at Fortune Society, and Consultant at Urban Justice Center. She received her MPA from New York University, she studied at City University of New York-John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and received her BA in International Management from Boston University.

Professor O’Brien has been Director of various criminal defense clinics at UMKC School of Law since 1983, including the Public Defender Appeals Clinic (1983-1985), the Public Defender Trial Clinic (1985-1989), and the Death Penalty Representation Clinic (1990-present). As an Adjunct Professor, he has taught Problems and Issues in the Death Penalty at UMKC since 1995, and he has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Washburn University. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Midwest Innocence Project. He teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and Wrongful Convictions. Professor O'Brien served as the Chief Public Defender in Kansas City, Missouri from 1985 through 1989, when he was appointed Executive Director of the Missouri Capital Punishment Resource Center, now the Public Interest Litigation Clinic, where he represents clients in capital trial, appeal and postconviction cases. Professor O'Brien’s noteworthy cases include Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298 (1995), which preserves the right of habeas corpus review for innocent prisoners, and Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal, 523 U.S. 637 (1998), which preserves habeas corpus jurisdiction over Eighth Amendment issues which arise when death row prisoners become insane while awaiting execution. He received his B.A. in English with highest honors from Northwest Missouri State University in 1977, and his J.D. from UMKC School of Law, where he served on the Moot Court Board. In 2005, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Human Letters from Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, for his pro bono work on behalf of condemned prisoners. Professor O'Brien is a Past President of Missouri Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, former Chair of the Missouri Bar Criminal Law Committee, and is a frequent lecturer on criminal justice issues. His academic lectures include the Yale Law School First Monday in October Lecture Series, Executing the Mentally Retarded, (Hartford, CT, 2001); Westminster University School of Law A.J. Bannister Memorial Lecture, “Issues of Concern in the American System of Capital Punishment,” (London, UK, 1997), and The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, Competency to Be Executed: Interdisciplinary and Ethical Considerations (2001). He is a permanent faculty member of The Persuasion Institute, sponsored by the New York University School of Law, and The Habeas College, presented by National Institute of Trial Advocacy. Professor O’Brien is the 2006 winner of the American Bar Association Ross Essay Award, which recounts his last conversation with Missouri death row inmate Doyle Williams. Finding Redemption, 92 ABA Journal 59 (August, 2006), http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/finding_redemption/. His other recent publications include Capital Defense Lawyers: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 105 Mich. L. Rev. 1 (March, 2007), and Kansas v. Marsh: Putting the Guesswork Back Into Capital Sentencing, 105 Mich. L. Rev. First Impressions 90 (2006), http://students.law.umich.edu/mlr/firstimpressions/vol105/obrien.pdf. He is author of Missouri Criminal Practice, Chapter 21: Voir Dire and Jury Selection, and Chapter 24: Jury Instructions (MoBar, 4th Ed., 2005). Professor O’Brien has won many awards for his work on behalf of indigent prisoners, including the UMKC Law Foundation Don Quixote Award (1987), the National Lawyer’s Guild Social and Economic Justice Award (1993), the Missouri Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Annual Recognition Award (1994), the Missouri Association to Abolish the Death Penalty Legal Advocacy Award (1992), the Missouri Association of Social Welfare Annual Recognition Award (1994), the National Association to Abolish the Death Penalty Outstanding Legal Service Award (1998), the UMKC Alumni Achievement Award (2003), the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri Annual Civil Liberties Award (2003), the Lawyers Association of Kansas City Annual Charles Whittaker Award (2004). Professor O’Brien was named a Legal Leader of the Year by the Jackson County Record in 2005, and was Missouri Lawyer’s Weekly Lawyer of the Year in 2003 for his work in the exoneration of death row inmate Joseph Amrine. In 2005, Professor O’Brien received the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association Lifetime Achievement Award.

Keramet Reiter is a Ph.D. candidate in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. Keramet received a dual B.A. in Social Studies (social theory) and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, an M.A. in Criminal Justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, and a J.D. from the University of California-Berkeley. Her dissertation examines the supermaximum security prison boom: the explosion in the late 1980s and early 1990s of high-security, intense-deprivation-condition prisons across the United States. Her primary interests in this work include the history of criminal justice reform, the institutional development of the prison, and understanding and mitigating the day-to-day impacts of U.S. incarceration policies. She brings ten years of experience in prisoner education, prison conditions research, and prisoners' rights advocacy to this dissertation project.

From the days of her first career as a Legal Aid attorney, to her tenure as commissioner of a local government agency, and through her experiences leading the NYU Wagner faculty and administration, Ellen Schall's work has shifted commonly held notions of leadership from a focus on the attributes of an individual to an investment in the collective work of a group. Former NYC Mayor Edward I. Koch appointed Schall Commissioner for the New York City Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) in 1983. While at DJJ, Schall built a highly successful, effective team of existing and new staff members, transforming a troubled agency into one that Harvard University and the Ford Foundation selected to win their prestigious Innovations Award. The 1989 PBS documentary "Excellence in the Public Sector with Tom Peters" highlights her work to restructure the American model for juvenile justice. Dean Schall's achievements are not limited to city government and academic arenas. She has participated on the Selection Committee for the Innovations in American Government Awards run by the Kennedy School of Government completing a five year term in 2004, and beginning a new term in 2006. Dean Schall became a member of the Women's Forum, Inc - a community of New York women leaders - in 2007. In 2008, Dean Schall became a member of the newly-formed New York State Juvenile Justice Task Force. Dean Schall received a B.A. from Swarthmore College and J.D. (cum laude) from NYU School of Law.

Dr. Worden is the Director of the Finn Institute. He is also an associate professor of criminal justice and public policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York, on whose faculty he has served since 1990. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with specializations in public administration and public policy. Dr. Worden previously served on the faculties of the University of Georgia and Michigan State University. He has conducted basic research on the forces that shape police decision-making and behavior, and applied research on police strategies, programs, and reforms. His scholarship has appeared in a number of academic journals, and his research has been funded by the National Institute of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, and a number of local governments. In 2000, he was appointed to serve on the National Research Council’s Committee to Review Research on Police Policies and Practices. In 2001, he was appointed by New York’s governor to serve on the New York State Law Enforcement Accreditation Council, on which he continues to serve. He also served on the City of Albany’s Gun Violence Task Force, and New York State’s Crime Analyst Certification Committee; he currently serves on the Albany County Reentry Task Force.