Our Team

Alec is the Founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps. As one of the country’s leading experts in constitutional civil rights, Alec has pioneered cases to challenge the size, power, profit, and everyday brutality of the punishment bureaucracy across the United States. He has also worked with directly impacted communities across the U.S. to design innovative new legal, advocacy, and narrative strategies for challenging widespread illegal and harmful practices of prosecutors, police, probation officers, judges, and private companies who work with them to profit from the punishment bureaucracy.

Claudia is an employment attorney by training, and shares her expertise leading CRC’s management on issues including human resources, finance, information technology, facilities management and resource development. She works with managers to implement CRC’s strategic plan, and to ensure that all staff have access to the necessary training and expertise. Claudia joined CRC because she […]

Danielle obtained her Ph.D. from UCLA in Community Health Sciences with a minor in Law and has applied her background in public health and data to addressing systems of mass incarceration. Danielle’s education and experience at the intersection of health and justice lay the foundation for her abolitionist principles guiding the vision and implementation of […]

Elizabeth is a member of CRC’s founding staff. Following years of investigating and litigating cases challenging the criminalization of poverty she developed CRC’s Strategic Initiatives Department to help expand the ways in which the organization works to dismantle the criminal system. The department’s inaugural project, Ending Family Separation has gained national attention, raising public consciousness […]

Jeff’s work focuses on litigation of unjust practices in court systems. He was part of the team that challenged the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office’s use of fake subpoenas and other abuses of power, and has been involved in combating wealth-based detention systems in Texas, California, and other jurisdictions around the country. Jeff joined Civil […]

Marium supports CRC’s organizational strategy, strengthens internal operations, and works across teams to help advance the organization’s mission to end criminalization and systemic injustice. She brings experience in federal policy and advocacy on gender-based violence, having previously served as Vice President of Policy at the National Domestic Violence Hotline and in senior policy roles at […]

Alec is the Founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps. As one of the country’s leading experts in constitutional civil rights, Alec has pioneered cases to challenge the size, power, profit, and everyday brutality of the punishment bureaucracy across the United States. He has also worked with directly impacted communities across the U.S. to design innovative new legal, advocacy, and narrative strategies for challenging widespread illegal and harmful practices of prosecutors, police, probation officers, judges, and private companies who work with them to profit from the punishment bureaucracy.

ImeIme is a former CRC Legal Fellow who works as an Assistant Defender for the Michigan State Appellate Defender Office (SADO).  She joined SADO after working as a staff attorney in the Trial Division at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Prior to becoming a public defender, ImeIme clerked for Justice Sonia […]

Milica Bogetić is an Investigator with the Federal Public Defender for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Previously, Milica served as an Investigator at the Nashville Defenders, the Legal Aid Society (New York City), and the Public Defender Service (Washington, DC). Milica earned a Masters in Labor Studies from the City University of New York; her […]

Naomi Murakawa is an associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. She studies the reproduction of racial inequality in 20th and 21st century American politics, with specialization in crime policy and the carceral state. She is the author of The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America, and her work has appeared in Law & […]

Raj Jayadev is the co-founder of Silicon Valley De-Bug. De-Bug is an organization that focuses on community organizing, advocacy, and multimedia storytelling based out of San José, California. Through De-Bug’s criminal justice community program, the Albert Cobarrubias Justice Project, they created “participatory defense.” Participatory defense is a community model that was developed for families whose […]

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and the Founder & CEO of Freedom Reads, an initiative to radically transform access to literature in prisons. The author of a memoir and four collections of poetry, Dwayne’s latest book of poetry is Doggerel, released March 4, 2025. Dwayne transformed his 2019 collection of poetry, the American Book […]

Ryan Downer is the Legal Director at the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.  Prior to WLC, he served as director of litigation at Civil Rights Corps, where he oversaw cases challenging the criminalization of poverty, particularly in the areas of prosecutor misconduct and wealth-based pretrial detention. Ryan’s direct casework at CRC included a challenge to […]

Zoë is the Executive Director of FWD.us.  She launched the criminal justice reform portfolio at FWD.us in 2017 including defining its advocacy, policy, research, and philanthropic agenda. In her years since, Zoë has overseen administrative, ballot, electoral, and legislative criminal justice reform campaigns in states across the country and at the federal level. Before joining FWD.us, Zoë was the […]