Conference Organizers

Lead Conference Organizer
The lead organizer for this conference is Michele Deitch, an adjunct professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. Michele teaches a graduate seminar on “Prisons and Human Rights,” and was named a 2005-06 Soros Senior Justice Fellow by the Open Society Institute. A lawyer, Michele also serves as the Reporter for the American Bar Association’s Task Force charged with drafting standards on prison legal issues. She is a longtime Contributing Editor for the Correctional Law Reporter, and previously served as a court-appointed monitor in the Ruiz Texas prison reform case. Michele also served as one of the planners of the Pace Law School conference on prison reform in 2003, and helped organize a videoconference on jail crowding for the National Institute of Corrections.

Conference Co-Convenor
Michael Mushlin serves as the co-convenor for this event. Michael is Professor of Law at Pace Law School in White Plains, New York, and is the author of the three-volume set Rights of Prisoners, the country’s leading treatise on prison legal issues. He serves on the American Bar Association’s Task Force on prison legal standards; chaired the Committee of Corrections of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; and serves as a member (and former Chair) of the Board of the Correctional Association of New York. He was the lead organizer of the Pace Law School conference on prison reform in 2003.

Conference Advisory Committee

Alvin Bronstein
Director Emeritus, National Prison Project; U.S. representative to Penal Reform International; Co-chair, American Bar Association Task Force on prison legal standards

Fred Cohen
Co-Editor, Correctional Law Reporter; author of The Mentally Disordered Inmate and the Law; Professor Emeritus, SUNY Albany; part of Pace conference organizing team

William C. Collins
Co-Editor, Correctional Law Reporter; author of Jail and Prison Legal Issues: An Administrator’s Guide; former Assistant Attorney General, Washington State; part of Pace conference organizing team

Ted Gest
President, Criminal Justice Journalists; Distinguished Senior Scholar, Program on Crime Policy and the News Media, Jerry Lee Center for Criminology, University of Pennsylvania; author of Crime & Politics

Gary Johnson
Executive Director (retired), Texas Department of Criminal Justice

Art Wallenstein
Executive Director, Montgomery County (MD) Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation