Deaths in Custody: Speaker Bios

Andrea Armstrong is a 2023 MacArthur “Genius Award” Fellow and the Dr. Norman C. Francis Distinguished Professor at Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law, where she teaches incarceration law, constitutional law, criminal procedure, and race and the law. She is a leading expert on incarceration conditions who has dedicated her career to shedding light onto incarceration practices in the United States. Prof. Armstrong founded IncarcerationTransparency.org, a database and website that documents and memorializes individual deaths behind bars in Louisiana and supports documentation efforts in South Carolina and Alabama. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on carceral mortality, healthcare, and labor; the intersection of race and conditions of incarceration; and public oversight of detention facilities. Her research has been profiled by New Yorker Magazine, cited by the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and National Public Radio, among others, and published by leading civil rights and policy law journals including the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and Stanford Law & Policy Review, and University of California-Irvine.

Professor Armstrong is a graduate of Yale Law School (JD), the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (MPA), and New York University (BA). She is certified by the U.S. Department of Justice as a Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor.

Jay D. Aronson is the founder and director of the Center for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is Professor of Science, Technology, and Society. For the past several years, he has been focusing on deaths in law enforcement custody in the United States. His book Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do about It (2023), co-authored with Dr. Roger A. Mitchell, examines the history of efforts to counteract official government ignorance on this issue and proposes a variety of practical solutions to the lack of data about how many people die in custody each year. Previously, Prof. Aronson spent nearly a decade examining the ethical, political, and social dimensions of post-conflict and post-disaster identification of the missing and disappeared. Aronson received his Ph.D. in the History of Science and Technology from the University of Minnesota and was both a pre- and post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Carlos Ballesteros is a senior reporter at Injustice Watch, a nonprofit news organization in Chicago focussed on issues of equity and justice in the Cook County court system. Most recently, Carlos' reporting has focussed on deaths at Cook County Jail, which had its deadliest year in decades in 2023. Carlos' in-depth reporting on the deaths revealed systemic issues at the jail — including a lack of supervision and timely medical care — as well as Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart's failure to accurately report the circumstances behind the deaths to state regulators and families of people who died in custody. Before joining Injustice Watch in 2020, Carlos spent two years at the Chicago Sun-Times as a Report for America corps member, covering working class and immigrant communities, and was a breaking news reporter for Newsweek in New York City.

Dr. Sharen Barboza is an internationally recognized expert in correctional mental health. She is a licensed clinical psychologist in New York and Florida with over 20 years of experience. She monitors and consults regarding the care of mentally ill incarcerated individuals. Her expertise includes mental health services/program, crisis management, suicide prevention, quality improvement, self-injury reduction, and trauma-informed care. She has published on suicide, self-injury, dementia, and treatment outcomes with individuals in restricted housing. Dr. Barboza holds a master’s degree in Experimental Psychology from Tufts University, a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and is certified in Wholebeing Positive Psychology.

Laura Bischoff is an award-winning journalist who has covered Ohio politics and state government for two decades. She works for the USA TODAY Network Ohio bureau, which serves the Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other newspapers in Ohio. She was named best investigative journalist by the Associated Press in Ohio in 2020. Bischoff is a University of Michigan graduate. Bischoff has covered state prisons and criminal justice issues in Ohio for more than two decades. In November, she led the team that reported about violent, substandard conditions inside Ohio’s juvenile detention centers and youth prisons. In June, Bischoff and her colleague, Erin Glynn, published a statewide project focusing on deaths in custody of county jails. Bischoff and Glynn documented 220 deaths over four years – on average one a week, lax state oversight, medical neglect, abusive conditions and expensive lawsuits.

Clinique Chapman is the associate director of policy and advocacy with Vera’s Restoring Promise initiative, working to create organizational culture change within U.S. prisons. In partnership with correctional leadership and centering the incarcerated people most impacted by the system, she focuses on transformation of practice and policy. Before joining Vera in 2020, Clinique was a program manager with the Washington, DC Department of Corrections. Clinique honed her skills as a forensic social worker as a sentencing advocate and mitigation specialist with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Clinique is an adjunct professor at the Howard University School of Social Work, a board member of the DC Justice Lab, and an advisory board member of the Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop. Clinique's collaborative work while managing a portfolio of programs within the DC jail is highlighted in the acclaimed documentary, “Daughters”, which premiered on Netflix in 2024. Clinique is a double alumnus of Howard University. She holds a BA in sociology with a minor in administration of justice and an MSW from the Howard University School of Social Work.

Ethan Corey is The Appeal’s Research & Projects Editor. His work examines the use and misuse of data in the criminal-legal system, from manipulated crime statistics to the botched implementation of the Death in Custody Reporting Act. Ethan’s investigative research and reporting has been featured in many outlets beyond The Appeal, including In These Times, The Nation, New York Focus, WNYC, and BuzzFeed News. Before joining The Appeal in July 2018, Ethan worked as the head of fact-checking at Retro Report.

Kelly Davis is a freelance investigative reporter who writes about incarceration and vulnerable populations. For more than a decade, her work has focused on deaths in San Diego County jails, prompting a state audit and new laws to address deficiencies in jail medical and mental health care and oversight. She’s also written extensively about police reform, San Diego’s efforts to address homelessness and California’s attempts to reform its juvenile justice system. Her stories have appeared in The Guardian, The Intercept, The Crime Report, Voice of San Diego, Vice, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Imprint, The Appeal and U.S. News and have been honored by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. In 2023, she was named “Journalist of the Year” by the San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Michele Deitch directs the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas, a policy resource center working to transform the way we treat people in prisons and jails and to improve correctional oversight. She also holds a joint appointment as a distinguished senior lecturer at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and UT School of Law. Her areas of specialty include independent oversight of correctional institutions, prison and jail safety issues, the management of youth in custody, and juveniles in the adult criminal justice system. Before entering academia, Michele served as a federal court-appointed monitor of conditions in the Texas prison system as part of the landmark Ruiz v. Estelle case; as General Counsel to the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee; as policy director for Texas’s sentencing commission; as a consultant to justice system agencies around the country; and as the original drafter of the ABA’s Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners. She has won numerous teaching awards, including being named to the 2019 Texas Ten List of the most inspiring professors at the University of Texas at Austin; has been a Soros Senior Justice Fellow; and is the recipient of the 2019 Flame Award for the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE) for her significant contributions to corrections oversight. She holds degrees from Amherst College, Oxford University, and Harvard Law School.

Sharon Dolovich is a leading scholar of prisons and punishment. Her work focuses primarily on the Eighth Amendment, prison conditions, and the state’s obligations to the incarcerated. She directs the UCLA Prison Law & Policy Program and the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project, and teaches courses on criminal law, the constitutional law of prisons, and other post-conviction topics. Dolovich is also the Faculty Co-Director of the Criminal Justice Program. Dolovich has been a visiting professor at NYU, Harvard, and Georgetown, and a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and with the Program on Ethics and the Professions at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In 2021, she received the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, the university’s highest honor for excellence in teaching.

Nigel Duara is the justice reporter at the nonprofit newsroom CalMatters. His work has focused on fatal police shootings of unarmed civilians and a post-pandemic rightward shift in criminal justice policy. In 2024, he is writing an ongoing series on deaths in California jails, looking for systemic causes for the state’s surge in deaths from 2021-2023. Before joining CalMatters, he was a national correspondent on the HBO show Vice News Tonight and covered the U.S.-Mexico border for the Los Angeles Times. He graduated with a 2.6 GPA from the Missouri School of Journalism and is a proud member of the CalMatters Guild.

Kate has over 25 years experience of complex investigations within secure criminal justice settings. She has investigated prisoner homicides, suicides and natural cause deaths in prisons and jails in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Kate has previously served as the Head for Violence Reduction for HM Prison Service, Head of Suicide & Homicide Investigations for the UK's Prisons & Probation Ombudsman. She has also worked for HM Chief Inspector of Prisons and the UK's first cross-sector Forum on Preventing Deaths in Custody. Kate has worked in the United States for a number of federal, state and city jurisdictions, including the New York City Board of Correction, where she developed the methodology for death investigations across the City's jails. Kate has an Advanced Professional Certificate in Investigative Practice and is a Trustee for two UK based criminal justice charities. Kate recently chaired a high profile statutory inquiry into abuse in immigration detention, the first of its kind in the United Kingdom.

David Fathi is a lawyer and Director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, which brings challenges to conditions of confinement in prisons, jails, and other places of detention. He has litigated numerous prisoner rights cases throughout the United States, including challenges to inadequate healthcare in the Arizona state prison system, the Los Angeles County Jail, Baltimore City Jail, and many other carceral facilities. From 2012 to 2015 he represented the ACLU in negotiations leading to adoption of the United Nations Revised Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the “Nelson Mandela Rules.” From 2007 to 2010 Fathi was Director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch. The US Program works to defend the rights of particularly vulnerable groups in the United States, and it has published groundbreaking reports on the death penalty, prison conditions, racial discrimination, the rights of immigrants, and many other human rights issues. Fathi has lectured nationally and internationally on criminal justice issues. His op-eds have appeared in The Guardian, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, and other major media outlets. He is Chair of the Board of Penal Reform International , a Netherlands-based NGO that works for criminal justice reform around the world.

Linda Franks is the Board Chair of the Fair Fight Initiative, an organization that advocates for equal treatment under the law, confronts systemic injustice, and helps victims challenge abusers of power in court. Through litigation and community advocacy, Fair Fight Initiative exposes mistreatment in the law enforcement system and works to end mass incarceration. She previously served as Executive Director from 2018-2023.
Ms. Franks also founded the Lamar A Johnson Community Project, a non-profit that collaborates with trusted agencies, organizations, and individuals in law, mental wellness, health, and grassroots community advocacy to provide resources to those that have been traumatized by this unjust system. This project is named after her son, Lamar Johnson, who died while in the Baton Rouge Parish Prison.As a result of her son’s death, she joined with other family members and likeminded organizations to form the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition.
Grounded in a love for mankind and lead by her faith that people committed to fairness, justice, and respect for the dignity of all life can transform any oppressive situation into one thriving with opportunity and peace for all, Ms. Franks is striving to leave a legacy of service and authentic solutions for the future.

David L. Garlock is a successful returning citizen, criminal justice reform advocate, and re-entry professional. David enjoys educating the next generation of criminal justice professionals on rehabilitation, as well as advocating in various spheres for an effective and equitable justice system. He is a writer, author and poet who shares his story in many written forms. He is on numerous non-profit boards and is a frequent speaker at colleges and universities, criminal and social justice conferences, and community events. He was in the movie Just Mercy (2020) and presented at TEDx Arcadia in April of 2022.

Alyssa Gordon is a 2023-2025 Borchard Fellow in Law & Aging at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project in Washington, D.C. Her fellowship project focuses on compassionate release advocacy in carceral settings to help vulnerable incarcerated people secure early release, with the ultimate goal of drastically reducing America’s incarcerated population. In her work, Alyssa utilizes an integrated advocacy approach, which includes: 1) class action litigation in the Ninth Circuit to better protect the rights of elderly incarcerated people and people with disabilities; 2) policy development and bill drafting in Arizona to help pass the state’s first compassionate release law; and 3) research and public education initiatives to highlight the compounded abuse that aging incarcerated people face on the inside.
Alyssa is a 2022 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law. Immediately after graduating law school, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Victoria A. Roberts of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Alyssa fundamentally believes that, in the words of Mariame Kaba, we must fight to create a world where human disposability is unimaginable.

Krishnaveni Gundu is the Executive Director of the Texas Jail Project (TJP), a non-profit that organizes with and advocates for people in Texas county jails. She co-founded TJP in 2006 with other community leaders, including Diane Wilson, whose incarceration in several Texas jails inspired them to establish TJP. Krish served as an advisor until 2020 when she became Executive Director.    

Under Krish’s leadership, TJP grew from a staff of one to four full-time employees, a paid intern and contractor, and it became a go-to resource on jail conditions and operations. Sheddinglight.in, TJP’s digital archive of jail conditions, is frequently cited in news publications across the country. Krish has been published in the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, and she contributed extensively to a 2021 Texas Observer investigation on jail deaths. She has also been a source for the The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Democracy Now, and NPR’s Here & Now.  

Krish serves as a voting member of the Administrative & Rules Advisory Committee of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) and a de-facto member of the Texas Commission on Jail Standard (TCJS)’s Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Advisory Committee. She is also a member of the Texas Judicial Commission on Mental Health. 

Brittany Hailer is an investigative journalist with The Marshall Project—Cleveland. She is the former co-founder and director of the Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, where she investigated how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the Allegheny County Jail, specifically in regards to the jail's kitchen, its use of solitary confinement, and its isolation of the sick. For over two years, she tracked inmate deaths at the Allegheny County Jail and in other jails across Pennsylvania, and she built Pennsylvania's first jail death database as part of an investigative project for the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. She has also taught writing and journalism in jails, rehab centers, and at the University of Pittsburgh.

Jan Davis Hamm is a Chief Inspector for Evaluation and Inspections in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG), where she oversees evaluations of DOJ programs and inspections of Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities. Ms. Hamm has over 20 years of oversight experience in the federal OIG community. She holds an M.A. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland and a B.S. in Psychology. She has inspected operations at BOP facilities including detention centers, correctional institutions, medical centers, penitentiaries, female facilities, and prison camps. Her BOP evaluations have examined contraband interdiction strategies, COVID-19 pandemic impacts on inmates and staff, use of restrictive housing for inmates with mental illness, correctional policy development, and impacts on conditions of confinement. Ms. Hamm oversaw the OIG’s February 2024 report, Evaluation of Issues Surrounding Inmate Deaths in BOP Institutions, a comprehensive evaluation of 344 suicides, homicides, and accidental deaths that identified major shortcomings in the BOP’s ability to prevent inmate deaths in federal prisons.

Esteban holds a Master of Public Administration and a Master of Science in Counseling Psychology. Before incarceration, Esteban was completing a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology and his area of expertise was counseling patients experiencing grief, trauma, and loss. His passion is humanism and helping people find their way through tragedy. Esteban was accused of a crime he did not commit and is passionate about improving treatment of inmates, helping the formerly incarcerated, and reducing recidivism. Esteban is from California, but currently resides in Oklahoma. He is an enormous Star Wars fan and prefers a green lightsaber.

Tom Innes is the Director of Prison Advocacy at the Defender Association of Philadelphia.  In that capacity, he is the liaison between the Philadelphia Department of Prisons (PDP) and the Defender Association of Philadelphia, which represents 80% of the 4600 people presently in the PDP. Tom is a past member and past President of the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Prison Society and for ten years was a non-voting member of the Board of Trustees of the Philadelphia Prison System.  Recently, he was an invited speaker before Philadelphia City Council on the issue of Prison Oversight and prison conditions.

He has tried cases for the Defender Association for the past thirty-five years, and was a member of the Defender Association Homicide/Capital Case Unit for five years. He has been a member of the faculty of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy for over twenty years and has guest-lectured in the area of criminal trial practice and litigation at a number of law schools including University of Pennsylvania, Villanova University, Temple University University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.  He is an adjunct faculty member for the Temple University School of Law Masters in Trial Advocacy Program. 

Jimmy Jenkins is a Criminal Justice reporter at The Arizona Republic, where he covers incarceration, policing, and courts. His work has focused on conditions of incarceration in Arizona jails and prisons. Jenkins’ recent investigation found that the Maricopa County jails have one of the highest mortality rates in the country – more than four times the national average. He exposed the underreporting of in-custody deaths in the jails, and prompted the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to resubmit its death in custody reporting numbers to the federal government. Before his time at the Republic, Jenkins worked in public radio and public television for 7 years in Indiana and Phoenix. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Criminology and a Master’s degree in journalism.

Christin M. Johnson was appointed by Governor Ige in July 2022 as Hawaii’s first Oversight Coordinator for the Hawaii Correctional System Oversight Commission. With extensive experience in correctional oversight and reform, Christin has impacted prison systems and jails throughout the country. Originally from Michigan, she brings hands-on experience from her roles with the Office of Oversight and Public Accountability in Grand Rapids, where she led an investigative analysis team, and as a Standards Specialist with the New York City Board of Correction, focusing on jail conditions and protective custody. Earlier in her career, she served as an Analyst for the Michigan Legislative Corrections Ombudsman, overseeing complaints across Michigan prisons. Christin is a Certified Practitioner of Oversight through the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE). She holds a Master’s in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor’s in Sociology from Central Michigan University.

Dr. Sandhya Kajeepeta is the Senior Researcher and Statistician at LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute. Her research focuses on the public health consequences of structural racism, criminalization, violence, and housing insecurity. Dr. Kajeepeta was formerly a research associate at the Vera Institute of Justice where she worked on advancing local jail decarceration efforts. Prior to that, she served as the Director of Research and Evaluation at the NYC Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence where she led the city’s research agenda for gender-based violence prevention. Dr. Kajeepeta holds a PhD in epidemiology from Columbia University, a MS in epidemiology from Harvard University, and a BS in mathematics from the University of Michigan. Her research and writing have been featured in the American Journal of Public Health, Lancet Public Health, the New York Times, New York Daily News, and Rolling Stone magazine.

Terence Keel is a Professor of Human Biology & Society and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has written widely about race, culture, law, medicine, and the life sciences. Keel is the Founding Director of the Lab for Biocritical Studies—an interdisciplinary space committed to studying discrimination, inequality, and resilience among vulnerable populations. His forthcoming book with Beacon Press, States of Loss, explains how police violence limits the American death investigation system. Keel also serves as the Advisor for Structural Competency and Innovation within the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. His work has been published in Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, American Journal of Law and Medicine, Social History of Medicine, and the History of the Human Sciences. Keel has also appeared on ABC News and the Tavis Smiley Show.

Sarah Knight is from Houston, Texas where she serves as a pastor at Kings-Land Ministries church. She is also a home healthcare provider and the proud owner of Bebe’s Catering. Her son, Jaleen Anderson, died at the LaSalle Correctional Center (Louisiana) while awaiting trial on a drug possession charge in Harris County (Houston, TX). Jaleen was 29 years old. 

Sarah is a fierce advocate for changes to jail conditions in Texas. She has testified before the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) and has appeared in several news articles published in the Texas Tribune, Houston Chronicle, and NPR’s Here & Now. Her courage to speak about her son’s death has allowed her to be a voice for all mothers whose children have died while incarcerated. 

Aaron Littman is an assistant professor at UCLA School of Law and the faculty director of its prisoners’ rights clinic. His scholarship, on the sub-constitutional law of incarceration, has recently been published in the Yale Law Journal and the Vanderbilt Law Review. He has been recognized by UCLA as a Hellman Fellow and with a Public Impact Research Award and by AALS as a Bellow Scholar and with a Junior Scholar Award.

Since early 2020, Littman has been the deputy director of the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project, supervising the collection and analysis of pandemic and mortality data from carceral facilities across the country, serving as an expert commentator, and submitting invited testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Littman received his J.D. from Yale Law School, M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge, and B.A. from Yale College.

Ilica Mahajan is a computational journalist at The Marshall Project. She builds tools and analyzes data to uncover the complexities of the criminal justice system. Previously, she was a distributed systems engineer at a biotech startup building robotic microscopes. She recently graduated from Columbia University with a master’s degree in journalism and another in computer science.

Jolie McCullough is an award-winning criminal justice journalist who is currently investigating rural Texas courts for The New York Times. Before that, she conducted independent research and data analysis for the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab, helping to gather and interpret information on prison and jail deaths. She has previously worked at The Texas Tribune and The Albuquerque Journal, and The Arizona Republic.

Lauren McGaughy is an investigative reporter and editor for The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration of NPR stations in Texas. She focuses on criminal justice, governmental ethics and LGBTQ issues. In 2020, the Headliners Foundation honored her work on how police use hypnosis to investigate crimes. The Texas Department of Public Safety ended its hypnosis program and lawmakers cracked down on the practice after publication. New to radio, Lauren spent 15 years working for newspapers including The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, New Orleans Times-Picayune and Asahi Shimbun. She loves cats, cemeteries and public records requests. Ask about her wig collection!

Margot Mendelson is the Executive Director of the Prison Law Office, which challenges conditions of confinement in prisons, jails, and detention facilities in California and beyond. She worked at the Prison Law Office for six years before becoming Legal Director in 2022 and Executive Director in 2023. Margot’s practice involves challenging inadequate mental health care and disability accommodations in county jails and state prisons. She also focuses on combating the use of solitary confinement through litigation, technical assistance, and legislative advocacy. Margot is a graduate of Yale Law School and Harvard College and serves on the board of Immigrant Legal Defense, based in Oakland California.

Mercedes Montagnes (Consultant/ Brightflare LLC) is a senior civil rights attorney and strategic advocate with over a decade of experience successfully litigating against the State of Louisiana.  Mercedes has led teams that obtained relief in both individual and class action litigation, and her work has included challenges to extreme heat for clients on Death Row, deadly medical care for incarcerated patients, and the unconstitutional over detention of people behind bars. 

Mercedes’ expertise, rooted in her development and leadership of the Promise of Justice Initiative from an idea to an indispensable agent for change, supports nonprofits and foundations as they tackle organizational growth, leadership development and transitions, and litigation development.  She serves on numerous boards, including The ACLU of Louisiana, The Louisiana Lighthouse, and the Lamar A. Johnson Community Project.

Mercedes is a graduate of Barnard College (B.A.) and Harvard Law School (J.D.).  She clerked for Judge Carl Barbier (E.D. La.) and Chief Judge Roger Gregory (4th Cir. Court of Appeals).

Eva Ruth Moravec is the executive director of the Texas Justice Initiative, an Austin-based nonprofit organization that provides data on the criminal justice system in Texas. Since 2018, TJI has served as a resource for numerous researchers, reporters, friends and relatives of those affected by the criminal justice system, students, and more. Moravec is also the executive producer of City Cast Austin, which publishes a daily local news podcast and newsletter. An experienced journalist in print and on podcasts, Moravec has reported and produced narrative nonfiction podcasts for NBC News (Tiffany Dover is Dead*, The Revolution with Steve Kornacki, American Radical) and Vox Media (Chicano Squad), and written for The Washington Post, the Associated Press, the San Antonio Express-News, and others.
 

Paul Parker served as the Executive Officer of the San Diego County Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) for almost five years. During his tenure, he conducted on-scene in-custody death investigations and made numerous recommendations to reduce in-custody deaths, increase transparency of law enforcement operations, and increase communications with family members of persons impacted by in-custody deaths and deaths associated with law enforcement activities. Paul was previously the Chief Deputy Director at the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner, Assistant Coroner at the Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner, Director of the Pinal County (AZ) Medical Examiner’s Office and held Chief Investigator roles at the San Diego County Medical Examiner Office and Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office (Phoenix, AZ). Paul has participated in several thousand on-scene medicolegal death investigations, conducted at least 13,000 solo telephonic/electronically reported medicolegal death investigations, and reviewed and approved reports and circumstances more than 20,000 medicolegal additional death investigations. He has also conducted several hundred death notifications and has authored hundreds of policies and procedures pertaining to medicolegal death investigation. Paul’s memoir, “In the Shadows of Death: Writing Life’s Final Chapter” will be published in late 2024.

Andy Potter is a nationally recognized leader in labor and justice movements. Andy began his career as a correctional officer for the Michigan Department of Corrections where he worked for nearly three decades. He became the Executive Director of MCO in 2015 and has served in union leadership roles in Michigan and nationally through SEIU. In 2019 he was elected to serve as a Vice President for SEIU’s International Executive Board. He has chaired SEIU’s national Conservative Member Engagement Committee, the national Corrections Council and was President of the Michigan State Council. Currently, as the Founder and Executive Director of the national non-profit organization, One Voice United, Andy is working to transform the criminal justice system by building bridges and unearthing common ground between all impacted stakeholders. Andy sits on several boards or advisory councils for other leading national organizations, including the Urban Institute Advisory Board for Prison Research and Innovation Initiative. He has been published in the New York Times, The Marshall Project, The Crime Report, and The Detroit Free Press, and serves as a guest lecturer for “Bridging the Gap: Dialogue across Difference.” 

Katie Rose Quandt is a journalist who writes about criminal justice, incarceration, and inequality. She is a senior contributing writer and editor at Solitary Watch, and has written longform and investigative stories for outlets including The Atlantic, Slate, Rolling Stone, and The Nation. Katie Rose has reported on deaths in rural and small-city jails, as well as the link between solitary confinement and suicide.

Jessica Sandoval, MPA has dedicated three decades to community organizing and advocating for social justice causes – and has effectively led campaigns to change policies affecting youth and adults concerning incarceration, gang-involved youth, and harmful practices within the criminal legal systems. Through positions in leadership, boots-on-the-ground organizing and legislative advocacy, Mrs. Sandoval has developed and administered a variety of strategies and tools at both the state and national level. She currently serves as the National Director for the Unlock the Box Campaign, a national campaign to end solitary confinement in U.S. jails and prisons. Mrs. Sandoval has appeared in a variety of media outlets, including NPR, Rolling Stone, PBS, Business Insider, and Esquire. In 2016, she was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Metropolitan State University of Denver, which distinguishes her as one of the university’s top ten most impactful alumni. Mrs. Sandoval lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband and 9 year-old son.

Sumeet Sharma is a Director at the Correctional Association of New York (CANY), where he advocates for policies that improve prison conditions and reduce deaths in custody.  He has extensive experience in state government, formerly serving in the New York State Assembly, where he played a pivotal role in enacting legislation to enhance prison oversight and accountability.  Sumeet is a graduate of the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance's Kriegel Fellowship for Public Service Leaders. He is passionate about fostering collaboration among oversight bodies to prevent deaths in custody.

Aviva Stahl is an award-winning investigative journalist who writes about science and health at the intersection of politics and power. She’s been published by a broad array of outlets including the Guardian, New York Magazine/The Cut and Wired. In April, she published a public records-based investigation into deaths in NJ prisons, concluding that men were dying of treatable cancers, potentially treatable manifestations of chronic illnesses, as well as potential complications of neglect. You can follow her on Twitter/X @stahlidarity.

Marc is a general internist with 24 years’ experience as a correctional physician in a variety of settings including as a jail medical director, a regional medical director for a state DOC, a regional medical director for a for-profit, and as assistant secretary/medical director for a state DOC. He has provided consultation and assistance on correctional health care to a variety of organizations and agencies including DHS, USDOJ, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bureau of Justice Assistance, National Institute of Corrections, California Attorney General, Human Rights Watch, ACLU National Prison Project, Federal courts, and the Namibian Correctional Service, and he currently serves as medical advisor to the American Jail Association and the National Sheriffs’ Association, and as lead federal court-appointed monitor in a class action lawsuit against a state DOC regarding health care and solitary confinement. Marc also conducts research and teaches at the UWashington School of Public Health, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Correctional Medicine, and is past chair of the education committees of the American College of Correctional Physicians and the Academic Consortium on Criminal Justice Health.

Hernandez D. Stroud is senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. He studies institutional reform litigation involving prisons and jails.  He is currently drafting the first comprehensive law review article on all U.S. judicial takeovers of correctional institutions through receivership.  He also drafts and spearheads federal criminal legal and policy reforms.  He currently serves on faculties of Columbia University and New York University School of Law, but has previously held academic appointments at Yale, Washington and Lee, and Boston College.  Stroud served as acting director of policy for the City of New Haven.  A first-generation college graduate from Alabama, he holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and a law degree from Washington and Lee University.  After law school, he clerked for Hon. Madeline Hughes Haikala of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama and Hon. O. Rogeriee Thompson of the U.S Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Carrie Teegardin is a senior reporter on the investigative team at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She is a graduate of Duke University and has won numerous national journalism awards. Since 2023, her work has exposed corruption, violence and rising deaths inside Georgia’s prison system as part of an ongoing investigative series. She was a lead reporter on the AJC’s award-winning Unprotected series, which prompted Georgia to reform its requirements for senior care homes in 2020. She was a lead reporter on the AJC’s Doctors & Sex Abuse national investigation, which was a Pulitzer finalist. She was a lead reporter on the AJC’s Borrower Beware series, which won a Gerald Loeb award in 2006. She has written extensively about health care, unfair business practices and the criminal justice system.

Homer Venters is the former Chief Medical Officer of the NYC Jail System, and currently works as a Court- appointed monitor and inspector of health services in jails and prisons. He is also the author of Life and Death in Rikers Island (2019), Outbreaks Behind Bars (2025) and is part of the Adjunct Faculty at the NYU School of Global Public Health.

Jennifer Vollen-Katz is the Executive Director of the John Howard Association of Illinois (JHA). She leads JHA’s prison monitoring and policy reform work, as well as the organization’s efforts to increase transparency and hold government accountable for the conditions of confinement and treatment of the people who are incarcerated in Illinois. Prior to her role as Executive Director, Jennifer was the Director of the Juvenile Justice Project at JHA, monitoring the state-run juvenile facilities, and championing efforts to both reform the system and close facilities. Before joining JHA, Jennifer was a lecturer in law and a clinical supervisor at the University of Chicago Law School, Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, Federal Criminal Justice Project. She was also a staff attorney with the Federal Defender Program, where she represented indigent defendants in federal criminal cases in the Northern District of Illinois. She earned her Bachelor's Degree from St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York; her law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center, Washington D.C.; and her MSc in Criminal Justice Policy from the London School of Economics and Politics, London, England.

Madalyn K. Wasilczuk is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Her work focuses on criminal legal system issues, including policing, race, extreme sentencing, conditions of confinement, and the prosecution and detention of children and pregnant people. Professor Wasilczuk’s scholarship appears in publications such as the Georgetown Law Journal, Wisconsin Law Review, and Buffalo Law review, and it has been featured by numerous local and national news outlets. Her database on deaths in custody in South Carolina, hosted at incarcerationtransparency.org/southcarolina features publicly available information and documentation of deaths in South Carolina lockups, juvenile detention centers, jails, and prisons since 2015. Professor Wasilczuk holds a B.A. in International Studies with Honors, summa cum laude, from American University and a J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she earned the Leonard J. Schreier Memorial Prize in Ethics. She is licensed to practice law in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina (limited to clinical practice).

Alycia Welch is Associate Director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Her research focuses on the safe and humane treatment of people in custody, with a particular focus on women and individuals living with behavioral health challenges. She has nearly 20 years of experience managing multi-partner projects reforming the justice and behavioral health systems. She directed a transitional housing program for women exiting prison or jail, developed an alternative to incarceration program for young adults, oversaw a multistate, federally funded initiative providing training and technical assistance on behavioral health and criminal justice issues, and designed multiple studies assessing the impact of community-based programs on those who are justice-involved. The recipient of several national policy research awards, Alycia served as policy analyst for two members of the Texas House of Representatives and has authored numerous reports for state and local government officials, corrections administrators, and advocates that have been selected for inclusion in several publications and featured in major national news outlets. Alycia is a proud alum of the LBJ School, where she received her Master of Public Affairs while simultaneously earning her Master of Science in Social Work at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan.

Dean was the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections from January 2019 to December 2022 where he oversaw all prison, parole, and re-entry efforts in the state. Prior to joining the Colorado DOC, he was the Commissioner of Corrections in Alaska where he oversaw prisons operations, probation, pretrial enforcement, and all jail operations in the state. In Alaska, he served as Special Assistant to Governor Walker who tapped him to investigate high-profile deaths in the state prison system. When he was appointed Commissioner he developed the first internal investigation unit at the DOC (an indicator of a problem) to address criminal/wrongful conduct and also to develop a root cause analysis process to prevent deaths and harm. In the adult corrections field, Dean and community partners’ initiatives developed inmate-led newspapers, podcasts, radio stations, theater, inmate seminary education, honor units, mentoring, and substance abuse training. Purposeful prisons and smarter re-entry were the focus of Dean’s leadership in both state correction systems. Dean won the International Corrections and Prison Association’s Head of Service Award for 2022 for his reform efforts in the Colorado DOC.