Michele Deitch is an attorney with over 20 years of experience working on criminal justice policy issues with state and local government officials. She was recently named a 2005-06 Soros Senior Justice Fellow, one of only six such fellowships awarded nationally by the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation. Her areas of specialty within the criminal justice field include institutional conditions and management, prison and jail overcrowding, corrections law, prison privatization, sentencing reform, probation and parole, and alternatives to incarceration. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.Sc. in psychology (with a specialization in criminology) from Oxford University, and a B.A. from Amherst College.
Since 1993, Deitch has served as an independent consultant to state and local policy-makers and agency officials around the country on a wide range of corrections and sentencing issues. She also currently serves as Reporter to an American Bar Association Task Force that is drafting national standards on prison legal issues, and most of her current research focuses on the issues of prison oversight, accountability, and human rights. Deitch also currently serves as Contributing Editor to the Correctional Law Reporter, one of the country?s leading journals for correctional administrators and lawyers. Previously, she held some key positions with the Texas Legislature, including serving as General Counsel to the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee and as the Policy Director of the Texas Punishment Standards Commission. Working in those posts, she was involved with virtually every major criminal justice policy initiative considered by state officials in Texas in the early 1990s. During the late 1980s, Deitch was appointed by Judge William Wayne Justice as a monitor of conditions in the Texas prison system, as part of the landmark Ruiz prison reform lawsuit.
In 1990, Deitch was the Hart Visiting Fellow at the University of London (Queen Mary and Westfield College), where she did research, writing, and teaching on criminology and criminal justice. She has lectured on criminal justice subjects both nationally and internationally, has organized academic conferences, and has a host of publications in the field. She has also served on several boards, including serving as a member of the Amherst College Board of Trustees. She teaches a course on criminal justice policy at the LBJ School, and organized a conference entitled "Opening Up a Closed World: What Constitutes Effective Prison Oversight?" which was held at the LBJ School in April 2006.
Crime and Criminal Justice
