Staff & Volunteers

The Prison Policy Initiative's accomplishments are those of a much larger organization, but all of our work is done by our part-time Executive Director and the part-time volunteers he coordinates. Learn more about our current and past staff.

Staff

Peter Wagner, JD, Executive Director. Peter Wagner teaches, lectures, and writes about the negative impact of mass incarceration in the United States. His current focus is on working to demonstrate - through graphics, legal research, and state-by-state analyses - the distortion of the democratic process that results from the U.S. Census Bureau's practice of counting the nation's mostly urban prisoners as residents of the often remote communities in which they are incarcerated. The New York Times editorial board has written nine editorials supporting his efforts to change the way prisoners are counted, and the Boston Globe identified him as the "leading public critic" of the prisoner miscount. He has presented his research at national and international conferences and meetings, including a Census Bureau Symposium, a meeting of the National Academies, and keynote addresses at Harvard and Brown Universities. Mr. Wagner's publications include Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York (2002); The Prison Index: Taking the Pulse of the Crime Control Industry (2003); and, with Eric Lotke, Prisoners of the Census: Electoral and Financial Consequences of Counting Prisoners Where They Go, Not Where They Come From, [PDF] 24 Pace L. Rev. 587 (2004).

Current volunteers

Elena Lavarreda edits our database of legal resources for prisoners and is hoping to develop an innovative research project while a Prison Policy Initiative volunteer.

Leah Sakala helps with special projects. She is a student at Smith College and an organizer of Smith Students for Social Justice and Institutional Change.