About Us
Our mission
The prison system makes no room for compassion, nor is there recognition within the criminal legal system that people change or grow. By creating many ways into the prison but almost no way out, Illinois’ criminal legal system has wrought extraordinary moral and fiscal costs for individuals and communities. At the Illinois Prison Project, we fight against regressive policies, racist practices, and a system that treats people as disposable with a mission focused on hope, compassion, and humanity.
Through advocacy, public education, and direct representation of thousands of needlessly incarcerated people, we bring hope to and fight in community with incarcerated people and their loved ones for a brighter, more humane, more just system for us all.
Our work
Direct representation
With a constant focus on release from prison, we provide direct representation to people in the Illinois Department of Corrections, train and support attorneys who provide direct representation, and empower incarcerated people and their families to advocate for themselves.
Education
Through its education work, led by formerly incarcerated people, IPP spreads awareness to community members, policy makers, and officials about the harms and racial injustice wrought by the criminal legal system and mass incarceration.
Advocacy & Policy
Through our advocacy work, we partner with other organizations to fight for short, medium, and long-term expansions of decarcerative policies and mechanisms.
Our Principles
No one is their worst act
A firm belief in the power of rehabilitation is central to meaningful criminal justice reform. We are all human, and humans make mistakes. We evolve and we grow. We improve, we learn, and we change our minds. That means people in prison, but it also means lawyers, judges, witness, law enforcement officers, politicians, and victims. Just as no one is defined by their worst act, no one is a prisoner to an old belief, a historical decision, or a past deed.
No one is beyond mercy or redemption
Our principles apply to all people, no matter the offense of conviction. We do not endorse policies that categorically exclude people from reform efforts based on their history, including offense of conviction.
Our criminal legal system is rooted in racism
Strategies to reform the criminal legal system must center Black and Brown voices and must explicitly acknowledge the role racism plays in the legal system’s history and ongoing operation.
Everyone’s voice matters
Common sense and effective criminal justice reform will require input directly impacted people and their families. It will also require input from crime victims and law enforcement officers, as well as lawyers, judges, and policymakers.
Who we are
Staff
Hailey Edwards is the Executive Assistant & Office Manager. Hailey organized and led Alternative Spring Break programs at nonprofits across the country each year during her undergrad with Waubonsee Community College and Aurora University, where her passion for public service and social justice was truly discovered. These trips exposed students to a variety of issues ranging from environmental awareness and sustainability, food and financial security, homelessness, migrants and refugees, domestic violence, and taught them different ways they could address systemic problems in their communities. She received her AA from Waubonsee Community College as a Gustafson Scholar, her BA in Psychology from AU in May 2019, followed by her MPA a year later in 2020, also from AU.
Hailey previously worked for a state representative, starting off as an intern while getting her MPA and later becoming Chief of Staff. Here, she organized monthly social justice meetings to connect the community with organizations and empower them with resources and information. She worked closely with statewide and local orgs to host community events such as “Know Your Rights” workshops, town halls surrounding cash bail and reproductive rights and period poverty awareness campaigns. She has also previously worked as a field organizer on several statewide campaigns and plays an active role in organizing her local community.
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Jessica Daniels is the Education Program Manager. A native of the west side of Chicago, Daniels formulated her passion for social justice through volunteering at Breakthrough Urban Ministries and participating in several arts and activism organizations in Chicago, including the Kuumba Lynx Performance Ensemble. Daniels studied political science and administration of justice at Howard University. During her time in undergrad she volunteered in DC’s Youth Service Center, where she mentored incarcerated youth and worked with correctional staff to decrease recidivism. Before working as a program manager, Daniels served as the public benefits outreach coordinator for Legal Aid Chicago. She began her work at IPP in June of 2021 as a program intern.
Marissa Jackson is a Northwestern Law Public Interest Fellow. She advocates for the release of incarcerated people through a variety of methods including clemency, resentencing, parole and administrative advocacy. During law school, Marissa served as a comment editor for the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. She also worked in the Center on Wrongful Convictions for two years, including serving as a teaching assistant. Marissa was awarded the graduating class Legal Profession Award, which is awarded by fellow students to the person who has made the greatest contribution to professional responsibility and to the practice of law. She attended the University of California, Santa Barbara for her undergraduate degree where she majored in comparative literature and history. After graduation, she worked at a nonprofit that supports community clinics in providing quality care to underserved populations in Los Angeles County, and then worked in administration at an elementary school. During this time, she also earned a master’s degree in U.S. and Latin American history, focused on human rights abuses.
Maria Burnett is a staff attorney. For more than 13 years, she worked with the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), first based in Bujumbura as the Burundi researcher and then later in Kampala as the Uganda researcher. She eventually became HRW's director for the East and Horn of Africa, supervising work on Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania. She has also consulted for philanthropic foundations working on human rights and democracy in East and Central Africa.
Burnett has researched and written on a broad range of human rights issues, including police brutality, free expression, child soldiers, the rights of indigenous people in the context of mining and exploration, the use of torture and extrajudicial executions, threats to civic space, and justice reform. Her writing has appeared in the BBC Focus on Africa, Al Jazeera, the East African, CNN, the Index on Censorship, and the American Scholar, among other news sources.
Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Burnett worked as an architect and journalist in Southern and West Africa. Burnett holds a law degree from Yale Law School, a master’s from the Architectural Association in London, and a bachelor's in architecture, summa cum laude, from Princeton University. She speaks French, Italian, and Albanian. She was a pro bono attorney with the Washington DC Compassionate Release Clearinghouse and is a commissioner on the Washington DC Human Rights Commission.
Sarah Free (she/her) is an Equal Justice Works Fellow and attorney at the Illinois Prison Project, where she advocates for the release of incarcerated people who were convicted under Illinois’ felony-murder rule when they were emerging adults. Free started her career as a high school teacher in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side and then worked in adolescent development at the Yale University Child Study Center in New Haven, CT. In law school, Free's work focused on the intersection of youth development and the carceral system, and she worked with incarcerated adults and juveniles on appeals, post-conviction matters, and conditions of confinement while at the Office of the State Appellate Defender and the ACLU of Illinois. She also worked in holistic defense for emerging adults at Lawndale Christian Legal Center in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood. Free is the co-author of a recently published report titled “Young Adult Justice 2022: A Nationwide Inventory of Policy and Practice,” and she actively supports local and national policymakers on issues related to system-impacted emerging adults. Free graduated magna cum laude from Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she was a Civitas ChildLaw Fellow, the recipient of the university’s President’s Medallion, and a member of the honors society Alpha Sigma Nu. She graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA where she studied psychology and philosophy.
Nadia Woods (she/ her) is a staff attorney, working alongside incarcerated folks to get them home. Before joining IPP, Nadia was a civil rights and criminal defense attorney with First Defense Legal Aid and The Bronzeville Law Group, respectively. Nadia graduated from Loyola University Chicago School of Law in 2021, and has since been admitted to the Illinois Bar and the General Bar of the Northern District of Illinois, as well as become an Adjunct Professor at her alma mater.
While in law school Nadia was a staff writer for the Public Interest Law Reporter, was involved in organizing both on and off campus, and worked at various clinics, legal aids and public defense offices. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biological Anthropology with a minor in Africana Studies from Texas A&M University.
Jennifer Soble is the founder and executive director of the Illinois Prison Project. After spending years representing clients condemned to die in prison in intentionally labyrinthian court proceedings, Soble founded IPP to advocate for better mechanisms for the release of people from prison. Prior to founding IPP, Soble was a staff attorney in the trial division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and an Assistant Federal Defender in the Northern District of Indiana. In both jobs, she represented indigent clients charged with serious felonies and specialized in forensic issues, as well as juveniles charged as adults and sentencing law.
She has also been Senior Legal Counsel to The Justice Collaborative where she worked with organizers, activists, and political candidates to advance criminal legal reform; a visiting clinical professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic where she represented juveniles and youthful offenders charged with serious felonies; and a litigation fellow for the Public Citizen’s Litigation Group where she litigated consumer protection, civil rights, and First Amendment cases. After graduating from the University of Michigan and Yale Law School, Soble clerked for Judge R. Guy Cole of U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Brian Johnson (he/him) is the Program Manager for the Medically Vulnerable Campaign, working to bring inmates with serious illness and disabilities home. Johnson started managing the Medically Vulnerable campaign in June 2021. Johnson began his advocacy work as an organizer with UChicago United’s #CareNotCops campaign, fighting to disarm, defund, and disband the University of Chicago Police Department, and their Dis-Orientation campaign, creating informational programming for incoming students around policing, racial justice, and more. Johnson has previously worked as a Justice Fellow with the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights. Before working as a Program Manager, Johnson started at IPP in June of 2020 as a Program Intern, assisting the Three Strikes, Veterans, and Women & Survivors campaigns.
Kaitlyn Foust is the Education Program Manager. In May of 2020, Foust graduated Summa Cum Laude from Loyola University Chicago, earning bachelor's degrees in Psychology and Criminal Justice & Criminology. She stuck around LUC for another year earning her MA in Criminal Justice & Criminology in May 2021. She was a Research Assistant in LUC's Center for Criminal Justice Research Policy and Practice during her undergraduate and graduate work, studying trends in criminal legal systems throughout Illinois. Foust has interned at several other Chicago based socially focused non-profits including National Runaway Safeline and World Relief Chicago. Before becoming a Program Officer, Foust was a Program Intern at IPP.
Mira de Jong is a Staff Attorney who works to bring incarcerated people home through a variety of methods including clemency, parole, resentencing, and administrative advocacy. Prior to joining the Illinois Prison Project, she worked for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia in their Prisoner and Reentry Legal Services Division, representing clients in disciplinary hearings at the D.C. jail and in motions for compassionate release. De Jong graduated from the City University of New York School of Law where she served as the Managing Articles Editor of the CUNY Law Review. While in law school, De Jong focused on working with currently and formerly incarcerated clients on postconviction matters and conditions of confinement. She graduated Cum Laude from Barnard College where she studied history.
Emily Mollinedo is a Notre Dame Law School Thomas L. Shaffer Legal Fellow and Attorney at Illinois Prison Project. Her Fellowship Rural Campaign Project focuses on trends of over-sentencing in rural and non-urban communities throughout Illinois. As part of this Project Emily advocates for the release of incarcerated people with unjust sentences through a variety of methods including clemency, parole, resentencing, and administrative advocacy. Further, as part of her Fellowship Project she advocates for policy changes and reform of Illinois' sentencing laws. Mollinedo is a member of the Hispanic National Bar Association, the Hispanic Lawyer's Association of Illinois, and the National Association of Women Lawyers. Mollinedo graduated from the University of Notre Dame Law School where she served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. While in law school, Mollinedo worked with the St. Joseph's Public Defender Office and the Exoneration Justice Clinic. She graduated with honors from New York University where she studied Romance Languages and History. Mollinedo is on the Editorial Board of the Women Lawyer's Journal, as well as a member of the National Association of Women Lawyers, the Hispanic National Bar Association, and the Hispanic Lawyer's Association of Illinois.
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Anthony Jones is an educator, criminal justice reform advocate, and paralegal. At the age of 20, Jones was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. While in prison Jones transformed his life, dedicating his time to pursuing higher education and his spiritual resurrection. This journey ultimately led him to a world he never knew before. Jones would eventually embrace another name becoming Anaviel Ben Rakemeyahu, growing to become a respected leader amongst his incarcerated peers. He he also earned his paralegal certification, two college degrees, and became certified by the Illinois Department of Health as a peer health educator and a peer mentor.
Jones helped many incarcerated citizens file successful petitions with the Illinois courts. In April 2020, Jones filed his own pro-se executive clemency petition to Governor JB Pritzker resulting in his release on July 28, 2021 after almost serving 30 years in prison. Jones continues to focus on education, which he refers to as "dedication" and helping others, believing that at the age of 50 is when we must focus on "intensified learning".
Rebeccah Lanni joined the Illinois Prison Project in July 2019. She brings over a decade of experience working within the nonprofit industry, primarily in social justice and specifically with in-custody and reentry programming/advocacy.
While receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, Social Service, and Spanish, Rebeccah spearheaded the Knox County Jail Literacy Project, revamping and teaching GED preparatory courses to men and women in the county jail.
Following her graduation and completion of two years of national service in AmeriCorps, Rebeccah worked with a nonprofit that facilitated therapeutic contact visits between parents and children in the San Francisco County Jails. In partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District, she advocated for and established the first parent-teacher conferences between fathers incarcerated at the jails and their children’s teachers.
Rebeccah continued her work by joining Defy Ventures where she supported men and women reintegrating into society after long periods of incarceration through community events and entrepreneurial programs. During her time in the Bay Area, she was an active advocate for the Fair Chance Employment movement, to ensure that individuals with conviction histories were considered for employment.
Candace Chambliss is the Legal Director and oversees the legal services team, including volunteer attorneys and law clerks, while also providing direct representation to people in prison. Previously, Chambliss worked in New Orleans as a public defender, representing youth in juvenile court and young people tried as adults. She worked with a New Orleans based non-profit to modify sentences for imprisoned youth, monitor and close down youth prisons and advocate for criminal legal reform. Originally from Chicago, Chambliss earned her BA from New York University and JD from Northwestern University School of Law.
Renaldo Hudson is an educator, minister, and community organizer, and focuses his work on ending perpetual punishment in Illinois. After being sentenced to death row, Hudson worked for 37 years while incarcerated in the Illinois Department of Corrections, where he became a leader, educator, and founder. Hudson developed and implemented groundbreaking programs inside the Department of Corrections, including the prison-newspaper Stateville Speaks and the Building Block Program, a transformational program run by incarcerated people within the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Hudson's work and life have been featured in media outlets including the BBC, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, and others. His story and work to create back end mechanisms for the release of incarcerated people is the subject of the documentary Stateville Calling. He was released in September 2020 when Governor Pritzker commuted his life sentence, and joined IPP as its Director of Education later that year.
Rachel White-Domain is the Director of the Women and Survivors Project. White-Domain previously served as the Policy Director for the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health (NCDVTMH) where she developed and managed a national policy portfolio to address systemic issues uniquely impacting domestic violence survivors experiencing trauma-related mental health and substance use conditions.
White-Domain also developed and has trained nationally on the Trauma-Informed Legal Advocacy (TILA) Project, which was the first comprehensive national training module on trauma-informed services that was designed specifically for domestic violence legal advocates and attorneys. She served on the Steering Committee during the creation of the National LGBTQ Domestic Violence Capacity Building Learning Center and also worked as a pro bono attorney with the Illinois Clemency Project for Battered Women and with Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers (CLAIM).
She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, as well as a long-time active member of the Mass Defense Committee, through which she has provided legal coordination support for social justice activists in Illinois and several other states. She graduated summa cum laude from DePaul College of Law, where she served as the Managing Editor of Lead Articles for the DePaul Law Review.
Shawn Mulcahy is the Director of Communications. Prior to joining the Illinois Prison Project, he worked as a journalist covering the criminal legal system and politics for outlets including the Washington Post, the Guardian and the Texas Tribune. He graduated with his master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 2020 and holds a bachelor's degree from Florida State University, where he majored in political science and public relations.
Ginevra Francesconi is Program Manager and an MA candidate at the University of Chicago in Social Work, Social Policy and Social Administration. Francesconi began her advocacy work for those who are incarcerated while at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, where she worked closely with residents by providing them with multidisciplinary programs. She continued in this field as a teaching assistant for the Inside- Out Prison Exchange program through DePaul University at Stateville Correctional Center and Cook County Jail in courses on Restorative Justice and the School to Prison Pipeline. Most recently, Francesconi worked for the Center for Conflict Resolution as the Juvenile Re-Entry Mediation Program Coordinator, where she developed and led a conflict resolution program for youth detained at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from DePaul University in 2020, where she studied Sociology and Peace, Justice and Conflict.
Yuchabel Harris is a Program Manager. A Florida native, she has been actively advocating for systemic change that will eliminate the racial and economic disparities of those who are incarcerated. Harris has led campaigns and facilitated discussions with community leaders to address the criminalization of people of color and the poor. Harris has worked on projects and served with organizations, such as Dream Defenders, that were focused on decreasing the number of youth that were being arrested and sentenced to juvenile prison in Florida. Shortly after her move to Chicago, Harris volunteered with Cabrini Green Legal Aid providing legal assistance on cases for survivors of domestic and sexual violence serving long sentences. Yuchabel is a graduate from the University of Tampa with a Bachelor's in English. And she plans to attend law school in 2023.
Vincent Boggan (he/him) is a Community Navigator and a recently returned citizen. After enduring 33 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections and with the Illinois Prison Project's assistance, Boggan’s sentence was commuted by Gov. JB Pritzker on Dec. 22, 2020. Boggan was severely impacted by the system when he chose to exercise his right to a jury trial on multiple counts of armed robbery and received a 135 year sentence. Over the course of his incarceration, Boggan earned several degrees and certificates. He became a born-again Christian shortly after his arrest and has been involved in ministry for more than 30 years. During his incarceration Boggan also discovered his gift in art and has created thousands of oil paintings. Although art is one of Boggan’s greatest gifts, he has no doubt that his main calling is simply to be a cog in the wheel for eradicating mass incarceration — long term sentences in particular. This calling began more than two decades ago when Boggan started his career as a Prison Law Clerk, helping people in their fight to get out of prison.
Team
Ambassadors
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Steering Committee
Veena Raiji, MD, MPH, specializes in diseases of the retina and macula, as well as ocular inflammatory disease. She joined Illinois Retina Associates in 2021, and is a Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of Uveitis and Inflammatory Disease Section at the Department of Ophthalmology at Rush University Medical Center. Dr. Raiji is certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology. She is fluent in English and Spanish.
After completing her undergraduate studies, Dr. Raiji earned a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, and then attained her medical degree from Michigan State University. Following medical school, Dr. Raiji completed an ophthalmology residency at George Washington University, where she served as chief resident. She completed her fellowship training at the University of Southern California’s prestigious Doheny Eye Institute, in Los Angeles. Dr. Raiji was the recipient of the Dr. Sacit Eren Award for Bedside Manner and Compassion from Harbor Hospital, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Dr. Raiji enjoys collaborating with her colleagues and attending national and international ophthalmology conferences. She has co-authored numerous medical journal articles and textbook chapters on topics such as hypertensive retinopathy, infectious scleritis, sympathetic uveitis, and non-neovascular age related macular degeneration. She frequently presents her research at the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Dr. Raiji has been awarded several research grants including one from the Illinois Society for the Prevention of Blindness that supports the study of ocular and non-ocular sarcoidosis. Dr. Raiji is a member of the American Uveitis Society, the American Society of Retina Specialists, and the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Dr. Raiji has provided ophthalmic care to underserved populations internationally, as a volunteer at the Lions Eye Hospital-Department of Ophthalmology, in Blantyre, Malawi and at the Tarabai Desai Eye Hospital, in Jodhpur, India. These outreach efforts have included screening patients for eye disease, assisting in pediatric and adult cataract surgery, and attending and giving lectures to local students and residents. Dr. Raiji sees patients in our Rush, Loop and Oak Park offices.
When Dr. Raiji is not caring for patients, she enjoys running, practicing hot yoga, reading historical fiction, traveling and spending time with her husband and two children.
Sheila A. Bedi is a clinical professor of law at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and director of the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic, a law school clinic that provides students with the opportunities to work within social-justice movements on legal and policy strategies aimed at redressing over-policing and mass imprisonment. Bedi litigates civil-rights claims on behalf of people who have endured police violence and abusive prison conditions. She also represents grassroots community groups seeking to end mass imprisonment and to redress abusive policing. Bedi teaches classes on legal reasoning and writing and the law of state violence to students who are incarcerated through Northwestern’s Prison Education Program. Bedi’s partnerships with affected communities on litigation and policy campaigns have closed notorious prisons and jails, increased community oversight of law enforcement, created alternatives to imprisonment and improved access to public education and mental health services.
Previously, Bedi served as a deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Her honors include the NAACP’s Vernon Dahmer and Fannie Lou Hamer Award and the Federal District Court Excellence in Public Interest Award (N.D. IL). Bedi writes about race, gender, and the justice system and her commentary has been published by U.S. News and World Reports, Huffington Post and USA Today.
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Len has the rare distinction of having won major criminal cases at every level of the state and federal court systems, including wins (obtaining the reversal of his clients’ criminal convictions) in the United States Supreme Court (drug conspiracy conviction), the Illinois Supreme Court (first degree murder), the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (first degree murder) and the Illinois Appellate Court (two first degree murders and one attempted murder). Len's practice at the trial and appellate level have helped change the law and advance the cause of justice.
Maria Hawilo is the Distinguished Professor in Residence at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law. She focuses her teaching and research on the criminal justice system and its vast overreach and disparate impact on African-American and Latino individuals. She also focuses on international law, particularly rule of law and trainings of institutional justice actors.
Hawilo has served as a supervising attorney for the District of Columbia’s Public Defender Service representing individuals charged with felony criminal offenses. She was a member of the Forensic Practice Group, a committee focused on the use of forensic science in the courtroom. Hawilo served as a law clerk for the Honorable David W. McKean, U.S District Court, Western District of Michigan. At Loyola this fall she is teaching Mass Incarceration.
Garien Gatewood is the director of the Illinois Justice Project. Previously, he was the Director of Policy Advocacy at the Juvenile Justice Initiative, where his work focused on legislation and policy reform for youth in Illinois. While at the Juvenile Justice Initiative, Gatewood worked on legislation on both local and state levels with a focus on the rights of children, detention reform, eliminating youth homelessness, juvenile expungement, and reentry. Prior to JJI, Gatewood worked for the Children’s Law Center where his work focused on systemic change and individual reentry services for youth throughout Ohio and Northern Kentucky. This youth reentry project was the first in the region to provide both reentry and legal services. In 2015, he was one of ten people selected as Youth Justice Leadership Institute Fellow of the National Juvenile Justice Network. During his fellowship, he developed a statewide youth reentry guide for Ohio and partnered with organizations throughout the nation to develop youth reentry programs.
Currently, Gatewood sits on Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center Advisory Board, the National Juvenile Justice Network's Membership Advisory Council, and the Board of Directors for Restore Justice Illinois. Gatewood earned his law degree from the University of Mississippi. During his time in law school, he clerked with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Mississippi Innocence Project. Prior to law school, he earned his Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Belhaven College and a B.A. in Political Science from Jackson State University.
Sarah Grady is a partner at Loevy & Loevy. She joined the firm in 2013. She leads the firm’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, which advocates for men and women locked up in jails, prisons, and detention centers across the country.
Sarah has dedicated her practice to ensuring that the rights of all incarcerated people are protected. She represents individuals and classes of individuals whose rights have been violated by public officials charged with safeguarding them. Sarah has litigated cases resulting in millions of dollars of compensation for her clients. She has also obtained injunctive relief to halt continuing denials of her clients’ constitutional rights. In addition, she has written numerous merits and amicus briefs addressing important issues pertaining to prisoners’ rights in the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals.
Sarah graduated cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 2012. During law school, she worked on prisoners’ rights issues and litigated death penalty cases with the MacArthur Justice Center and Death Penalty Clinic at Northwestern University School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic. Following her graduation, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Matthew F. Kennelly of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Steven Drizin is a Clinical Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law where he has been on the faculty since 1991. He served as the Legal Director of the Clinic's renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions from March 2005 to September 2013. At the Center, Drizin's research interests involve the study of false confessions and his policy work focuses on supporting efforts around the country to require law enforcement agencies to electronically record custodial interrogations. Drizin co-founded the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth (CWCY) in 2008, the first innocence organization to focus on representing defendants who were only teenagers when they were wrongfully convicted. Drizin and former student Laura Nirider, who co-directs the CWC, represent Brendan Dassey, a central figure in Netflix's smash docuseries Making a Murderer.
Prior to joining the Center on Wrongful Convictions, Drizin was the Supervising Attorney at the Clinic's Children and Family Justice Center where he built a reputation as a national expert on juvenile justice related issues. He was a leader in the successful effort to outlaw the juvenile death penalty and co-wrote an amicus brief in Roper v. Simmons, the United States Supreme Court's decision striking down the juvenile death penalty as unconstitutional. In August 2005, Drizin received the American Bar Association's Livingston Hall Award for outstanding dedication and advocacy in the juvenile justice field. Drizin received his BA with Honors from Haverford College in 1983 and his JD from Northwestern University School of Law in 1986 where he was the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.
Jeanne Bishop is a public defender, human rights advocate, writer, speaker, teacher, and mom. Since the 1990 murders of her sister Nancy Bishop Langert, her husband and their unborn baby, she has advocated for forgiveness and reconciliation, violence prevention and reform of the criminal justice system to make it more merciful. Bishop is the author of Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer. (Westminster John Knox Press 2015) and the forthcoming Grace From the Rubble: Two Fathers’ Road to Reconciliation After the Oklahoma City Bombing (Zondervan 2020).
