Prison Policy Initiative Alumns

As a participant in our 2011 Alternative Spring Break program, Andrew Adams helped to complete our Primer for reporters on county or municipal redistricting & prison-based gerrymandering before calling dozens of rural reporters to introduce them to the problem of prison-based gerrymandering. Andrew will graduate from CUNY Law School in 2013.

Erika Arthur's research on prison-based gerrymandering in the summer of 2008 was published in Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in California. As of 2010, she is a graduate student in History at the University of Massachusetts.

In 2006, Arla Berman worked on projects that were later published as Phantom constituents in the Empire State and the Democracy Toolkit.

As a 2006 law clerk, Brett Blank led our research that will soon be published as Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Illinois. He also published Prisons Warp Vote on TomPaine.com which explained how the prison industry exploits a loophole in Reynolds v. Sims to exert direct influence over the political process. He will graduate from the Western New England College School of Law in May 2009.

After graduating from Smith College in 2009, Olivia Cummings volunteered as a research intern at the Prison Policy Initiative. Among other accomplishments, she co-authored a report with Peter Wagner on prison-based gerrymandering in Maryland which led to that state being the first in the nation to enact a law requiring that incarcerated people be counted at home for redistricting purposes. Olivia will begin a Ph.D. program in history at the University of Wisconsin Madison in the fall of 2010.

As part of our 2007 Alternative Spring Break program, JooHye DellaRocco calculated how the prison miscount harms democracy in rural Tennessee, co-authoring Phantom Constituents in Tennessee's Boards of County Commissioners. She graduated in 2007 with a Master of Arts degree in Criminal Justice from the State University of New York at Albany.

As a participant in our 2010 Alternative Spring Break program, Christian de Ocejo helped prepare our reports Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Connecticut and Fixing prison-based gerrymandering after the 2010 Census: A 50 state guide. The Connecticut report led to legislation being introduced in that state, and the 50 state report was cited in a New York Times editorial. Christian will graduate from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 2012.

Sue Gershon came to us from our partner Demos in 2010. She wrote the article 20 years ago, California's Attorney General endorsed counties' response to prison count, and helped to prepare a half dozen fact sheets and a over a thousand individualized letters to county officials in rural counties that had large prisons. In January 2011, she will be joining the Boston office of the Public Interest Network as Assistant General Counsel.

William Goldberg was a Prison Policy Initiative intern in 2006 and a research associate in 2007. Among other projects, he wrote Imprisoned in Low Wages: Limited access to education for people in prison leads to economic exclusion in the July/August 2007 issue of Dollars & Sense and co-authored our reports The Geography of Punishment and Phantom Constituents in the Empire State.

As an undergraduate, Ellie Happel researched how the New York City council's use of flawed Census Bureau counts of the Rikers Island population to draw council districts distorts electoral democracy. This research won her the 2005 Borgman Prize for the best senior thesis in the social sciences at New York University, and her findings were included in our report Phantom Constituents in the Empire State: How Outdated Census Bureau Methodology Burdens New York Counties.

Stephen Healy co-founded the Prison Policy Initiative in 2001. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Geography in the Physical and Earth Sciences department at Worcester State College.

As a 2006 law clerk, John Hejduk wrote Census Bureau's Prisoner Count Hurts Ohio Democracy and co-wrote Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Wisconsin. He will graduate from the Western New England College School of Law in May 2009.

Rose Heyer developed that GIS methodology for the Prisoners of the Census project, enabling us to quickly calculate how Census Bureau's prison miscount distorts representative democracy. She produced our most popular map U.S. Prison Proliferation, 1900-2000 and she co-authored Too big to ignore: How counting people in prisons distorted Census 2000, Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Massachusetts Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Texas, Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Ohio, and Thirty-Two Years After Attica: Many More Blacks in Prison but not as Guards. Rose is now GIS and CAD consultant in California.

In 2006, Ben Iddings was the first editor of our legal resources for prisoners database. Ben did the hard work of the original compilation, allowing us to easily update the list each year. He graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law and is now a public defender in Fort Collins, CO.

Aleks Kajstura began her career with the Prison Policy Initiative in 2003 helping to digitize criminal justice reports, and soon thereafter was editing our research database. She helped develop our Prisoners of the Census project and to prepare evidence for the Southern Center for Human Rights' Whitaker v. Perdue case. Last but not least, Aleks led our school zone project and was lead author of the report, The Geography of Punishment: How Huge Sentencing Enhancement Zones Harm Communities, Fail to Protect Children. After graduating from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in May 2008, Aleks assumed the position of President of the Prison Policy Initiative Board of Directors.

As a policy intern from the Smith College School of Social Work (Class of 2012), Alex Kim helped with outreach to rural county and municipal officials about the solutions to prison-based gerrymandering.

As a participant in our 2011 Alternative Spring Break program, Cara Kowalski reached out to dozens of rural reporters in Oklahoma and Texas to introduce them to the problem of in county and municipal redistricting. A Senior at SUNY Geneseo, she will graduate in May 2011.

Sarah Kowalski co-founded the Prison Policy Initiative in 2001. She graduated from Smith College in 2003. Until recently, she has been living in China teaching English. In 2008, she moved back to the U.S. to seek a position as a high school teacher of Chinese.

As a participant in our 2011 Alternative Spring Break program, Drew Kukorowski helped to complete our Primer for reporters on county or municipal redistricting & prison-based gerrymandering before calling dozens of rural reporters to introduce them to the problem of prison-based gerrymandering. Drew will graduate from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 2012.

Elena Lavarreda joined the Prison Policy Initiative as a research associate shortly after her graduation from Smith College in 2008. Among other projects, she co-authored reports about prison-based gerrymandering in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. She is now applying to graduate school in Wisconsin.

Lauren Marcous worked with us as a law clerk on a Public Interest Fellowship in the summer of 2010. She researched how prison-based gerrymandering harms democracy in dozens of rural counties around the country, and wrote articles about her findings in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. Her Alabama article was picked up by the Atmore Advance. She will graduate from the Western New England School of Law in 2012.

As part of our 2006 Alternative Spring Break program, Yugo Nakai researched how how the prison miscount distorts democracy in Illinois counties. This research will be published soon in a report entitled Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Illinois. His work helped to fine tune our research methodology eventually published in Democracy Toolkit. He graduated from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 2007.

As part of our 2007 Alternative Spring Break program, Meghan Rudy helped to complete research on how counties in New York State grapple with the redistricting implications of the Census Bureau's decision to count people in prison as residents of the census block that contains the prison. She co-authored our report, Empire State: How outdated Census Bureau methodology burdens New York counties, the findings of which were endorsed by the New York Times editorial board. She will graduate from the Hofstra University School of Law in May 2009.

As a summer intern in 2006 from Smith College, Justine Sheffler found the data that became our Phantom Constituents in Tennessee's Boards of County Commissioners report and helped to map the exclusion of people on Georgia's sex offender registry for the Southern Center for Human Rights' Whitaker v. Perdue case. She graduated from Smith College in 2008, and is now (2011) doing outreach and development work at Nuestra CDC, a nonprofit working to improve the built and environment and promote community wealth generation in Roxbury, Mass.

As a participant in our 2011 Alternative Spring Break program, Marbre_Stahly-Butts reached out to dozens of rural reporters in Texas and California to introduce them to the problem of in county and municipal redistricting. Marbre is a 1L at Yale Law School.

As a policy intern from the Smith College School of Social Work (Class of 2012), Morgan Stone helped to build a database of correctional facility locations to be used for redistricting.

As a summer intern in 2006, Allison Tompkins researched how how the Census Bureau's prison miscount distorts democracy in rural counties. Her work helped us fine tune the our research methodology eventually published as the Democracy Toolkit. Allison also spent a week helping us to map bus stops in Georgia for the Southern Center for Human Rights' lawsuit Whitaker v. Perdue which challenged Georgia's ban on people on the sex offender registry from living within 1,000 feet of schools, churches and a long list of other places including school bus stops. The state's hundreds of thousands of school bus stops are, almost by definition, any place there is habitable housing. The legislature unwittingly declared all urban areas, all suburban areas and most rural areas off limits. This law was so extreme that it merited opposition from many of the state's sheriffs. This litigation is still ongoing. Allison graduated from Smith College in 2008.

As a participant in our 2010 Alternative Spring Break program, Sheila Vennell O'Rourke wrote a memo with a list of most of the new prisons built or expanded from 2000 to 2010 and the Idaho profile in our report Fixing prison-based gerrymandering after the 2010 Census: A 50 state guide. This report was cited in a New York Times editorial. Sheila will graduate from the Roger Williams School of Law in 2012.

In 2003, Matt Widmer researched how all 50 states define in their constitutions and statutes where people in prison reside. His research formed an integral part of all future publications and advocacy on the Prisoners of the Census project. He is now an attorney in Alaska.