Appendix C
Speaker Biographical Sketches
Kathleen M. Brown, Ph.D., N.P., is a Practice Associate Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Nurse Practitioner in women’s health, and received her master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Brown’s research interests are related to victimization. In the 1990s, she introduced a sexual assault nurse examiner program to every county in Pennsylvania that has a hospital. These programs forged new relationships between nursing, law enforcement, and crime laboratories, bringing compassionate, efficient, and effective care to adult and child victims of hands-on sex crimes. More recently, Dr. Brown brought sexual assault nurse examiner programs to the entire state of New Jersey, creating an excellent nurse-based response to sexual victimization throughout the state. In 2013, she introduced a first-of-its-kind sexual assault nurse examiner program to the Philadelphia jail system. Outcome studies are being conducted by Dr. Brown and nurses employed by this large urban jail system. Currently Dr. Brown and a Philadelphia-based ex-offender community partner have created the Breaking the Cycle Program, designed to house women trafficked for sex in transitional homes for 1 year. The program focuses on assisting in the areas of addiction, mental health, and physical health. Dr. Brown teaches victimology, forensic mental health, and forensic science. Dr. Brown is a sought after expert witness in sexual assault and sexual homicide cases by both prosecution and defense in criminal and civil cases.
Scott Burris, J.D., is a Professor of law and public health at Temple University, where he directs the Center for Public Health Law Research. His work focuses on how law influences public health, and what interventions can make laws and law enforcement practices healthier in their effects. Professor Burris is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (A.B.) and Yale Law School (J.D.).
Johnna Christian, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University–Newark. She has published research about family visitation at prisons, the social and economic implications of maintaining ties to incarcerated people and reentry, and reintegration after incarceration. She is co-Editor of the forthcoming book Moving Beyond Recidivism: Expanding Approaches to Research on Prisoner Reentry and Reintegration (New York University Press) and is a member of the Racial Democracy, Crime and Justice Network.
Jamie J. Fader, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Graduate Chair in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University. She has a Doctorate in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Fader is an expert in youth justice, transitions to adulthood among vulnerable youth, urban crime, and qualitative research methods. Her book Falling Back: Incarceration and Transitions to Adulthood Among Urban Youth (Rutgers University Press, 2013) won the 2016 American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang book award for the “most outstanding contribution to research in criminology” and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences book award for an “extraordinary contribution to the study of crime and criminal justice.” She is in her 13th year of following a sample of young men incarcerated during adolescence, now in their 30s, and has developed a series of in-depth case studies documenting their continued system involvement and the precarity of their daily experiences as adults and as men. Her current book-length project examines the confluence of adulthood, masculinity, and crime in the context of a high reentry community in Philadelphia.
Larry Krasner, J.D., is Philadelphia’s 26th District Attorney. Before he was elected, Mr. Krasner served of-counsel at Greenblatt, Pierce, Funt, and Flores, LLC. He received his undergraduate degree at The University of Chicago in 1983 and his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1987, where he was selected to the Stanford Law Review. After multiple offers of employment in prosecutors’ and public defenders’ offices throughout the country, he worked as a public defender in Philadelphia from 1987 to 1991 and was then promoted to the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Philadelphia (1991–1993). In 1993 he started his own private practice,
specializing in criminal defense and police misconduct matters. He has remained in private practice ever since. During that time, Mr. Krasner has tried thousands of bench and jury trials in criminal and civil court in the Philadelphia area as well as other counties and states. Throughout his 30-year career, Mr. Krasner has been committed to social justice, having defended protesters pro bono who were involved with movements including ACT UP, Black Lives Matter, progressive clergy with POWER, Casino-Free Philadelphia, DACA Dreamers, Decarcerate PA, anti-gun clergy with Heeding God’s Call, antipoverty and homelessness advocates with Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Occupy Philly and Reclaim Philadelphia, and Grannies for Peace, among many others.
Clinton Lacey is Director of the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), DC’s cabinet-level juvenile justice agency, since 2015. Director Lacey has more than 25 years of experience working with youth and families—19 of which have been focused in the field of juvenile and criminal justice. He joined the New York City Department of Probation as the Deputy Commissioner for adult operations in 2011. In this capacity, he was responsible for the oversight of a division that supervises approximately 24,000 clients on probation and led a series of innovative initiatives designed to reform the Probation Department’s key policies, while building a host of new relationships with system and community partners. In June 2006, Director Lacey held a project manager position at the W. Haywood Burns Institute, working in several jurisdictions around the nation with stakeholders engaged in the Institute’s process of addressing racial disparities in local juvenile justice systems. In this capacity, he trained and collaborated with a cross-section of stakeholders, including judges, probation officials, prosecutors, public defenders, educators, advocates, community organizers, and the court-involved youth and families themselves. Director Lacey also served as the director of the Youth Justice Program at Vera Institute of Justice, and as the associate executive director of Friends of Island Academy, developing and managing services for 16- to 24-year-olds involved in the juvenile and criminal justice systems of New York City. He has a B.A. in Latin American and Caribbean History from Herbert H. Lehman College (City University of New York) and is a graduate of the Institute for Not-for-Profit Management at Columbia University.
Marjie Mogul, Ph.D., is the Senior Director of Research at Maternity Care Coalition, a maternal–child health and early care and education nonprofit organization serving pregnant women and families with young children in Southeastern Pennsylvania, including the MOMobile at Riverside. Her research focuses on the development, testing and implementation of
evidence-based interventions in maternal and child health using a multifaceted approach that includes policy and practice. She has presented at numerous national conferences on women in the criminal justice system, including the American Society of Criminology, the American Public Health Association and the National Commission on Correctional Healthcare. She was an invited attendee to a White House Convening on Women in the Criminal Justice System and published a New York Times letter to the editor on women behind bars. She serves on the Philadelphia Reentry Coalition and the Coalition’s subcommittees on Health and Wellness and Data and Metrics. The MOMobile at Riverside is an innovative program that provides parenting, doula, and lactation support to pregnant and postpartum women inside Riverside Correctional Facility, Philadelphia’s county jail for women. Dr. Mogul works closely with direct service staff to evaluate program outcomes.
Alison Neff, M.S.W., D.S.W., is the Clinical Director of the Center for Carceral Communities, where she coordinates psychosocial care for people released from incarceration. A doctoral candidate in the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, her work focuses on organizational processes that empower marginalized communities receiving care in social service agencies. Ms. Neff trains agencies and service providers in implementing evidence-based treatment and organizational modalities like cognitive-behavioral therapy and motivational interviewing. She has worked closely with community partners such as the Community College of Philadelphia and the MENTOR program in Philadelphia, as well as with Housing Works in New York to address the needs of marginalized clients, such as people with a history of incarceration, substance use, and homelessness. Ms. Neff also maintains her part-time practice as an emergency room social worker at an inner-city Philadelphia hospital, where she provides brief interventions for patients experiencing a range of medical and psychosocial crises. She previously worked as a clinical supervisor and therapist for children, adolescents, and families in the child welfare system, where she provided both brief therapy for children and families in crisis, as well as long-term clinical services.
Jim Parsons, M.S., is Vice President and Research Director at the Vera Institute of Justice and is responsible for shaping Vera’s research agenda and working closely with practitioners, government officials, and partner institutions to implement research findings. He previously served as both the Director of the Substance Use and Mental Health Program and Research Director of the International Program. His work has included studies measuring the overlap of mental illness and incarceration in
New York City and Washington, DC; the provision of jail-to-community reentry services in New York City and Los Angeles; an evaluation of drug law reforms in New York City; and research on the challenges that people with serious mental health disorders face accessing effective legal defense representation. Mr. Parsons directed Justice and Health Connect, a federally funded initiative to improve information sharing as a tool for coordination between justice and health systems. His international work includes a number of projects to develop and implement empirical rule-of-law indicators for the UK Department for International Development, the United Nations Department for Peacekeeping Operations, and the American Bar Association. Prior to joining Vera, Mr. Parsons worked at the Center for Research on Drugs and Health Behavior and the Institute for Criminal Policy Research in London where he conducted community studies of HIV prevalence among injecting drug users and evaluated needle exchange programs and prison reentry services.
Kempis “Ghani” Songster was imprisoned in 1987 for murder. Despite the fact that Mr. Songster was only 15, he was certified as an adult, convicted of first-degree murder, and received a mandatory life sentence without parole. He is what is called a juvenile lifer. While in prison, Mr. Songster developed and facilitated prison programs such as Cultural Awareness and Self-Enhancement and From Trauma to Triumph, and also co-designed and co-facilitated the Fathers And Children Together program. He has also co-founded outside nonprofits such as The Redemption Project (TheRedemptionProject.org) and Ubuntu Philadelphia (UbuntuPhilly.org); and is a founding member of Right To Redemption, which helped launch Philadelphia’s Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration. After 30 years of incarceration, Mr. Songster was released from prison, at the age of 45. Since his release, he has joined the staff at the Amistad Law Project (https://www.youcaring.com/amistadlawproject-1099350), where he continues to work for the release of others, as well as to end the sentencing of human beings to life without parole/death by incarceration. He has also joined the memberships of the Old and New Project (http://www.oldandnewproject.net) and Ecosocialist Horizons (www.ecosocialisthorizons.com). Mr. Songster continues to organize actively for healing justice and a more livable planet.
Naomi F. Sugie, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Criminology, Law and Society Department (and by courtesy, the Sociology Department) at the University of California, Irvine. Her research engages with issues of punishment and crime, employment, families, inequality, and new technologies for research with hard-to-reach groups. Her recent projects focus on prisoner reentry and the consequences of criminal justice contact for employment, mental health, and political participation. In the
Newark Smartphone Reentry Project, she created a smartphone application to study job search and employment experiences of men recently released from prison in Newark, New Jersey. Her work is published in journals such as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, Social Forces, and Social Problems, and has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Justice, and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Sugie earned a Ph.D. in sociology and social policy, as well as a specialization in demography, from Princeton University.
Charmaine Smith Wright, M.D., M.S.H.P., specializes in internal medicine and pediatrics as the Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Delaware. She received her M.D. from Harvard Medical School and completed her residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Harvard’s Combined Med-Peds program, where she was selected as chief in her final year. During residency, she nurtured her interest in maternal–child health and nutrition throughout the life span. She completed a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program and master’s degree in health policy research at the University of Pennsylvania, and joined faculty there in 2010 as an Assistant Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine with a secondary appointment in the Department of General Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). She works in the field of health behaviors, self-efficacy, and goal setting in two main arenas: (1) to understand the associations that exist between pregnancy behaviors, mother and child by studying prospective and retrospective cohort data, and implementing an randomized controlled trial testing a postpartum weight loss intervention, and (2) to improve weight loss and self-efficacy among obese primary care patients some of whom are awaiting bariatric surgery. Her goal is to design family weight loss interventions with and for vulnerable communities. She was previously core faculty at the Med-Peds Residency Program at the University of Pennsylvania and CHOP.
