Professor Joe co-authors report about public defenders and the COVID-19 crisis

Professor Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe has co-authored a new report for the Justice Collaborative, “When Every Sentence is a Possible Death Sentence: Public Defenders Speak from the Front Lines About COVID-19.”

The report is based on input from nearly 200 public defenders across the country about how the current public health crisis has affected their work and personal lives. According to Joe, a former New Orleans public defender, and her co-author, Justice Collaborative Senior Legal Counsel Ben Miller, the responses form a powerful argument that far too many people in authority continue to undermine public health and safety by processing far too many people daily into the criminal legal system while at the same time failing to protect the millions of people behind bars. Read the report

Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe’s scholarship focuses on the ethics of criminal justice. She graduated with honors from the University of Texas at Austin, and earned her J.D. from Stanford Law School. She clerked for the Honorable Napoleon Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.