Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New York Magazine, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. He is a graduate of Oxford University and has a master's degree from Columbia University School of Journalism. In 2000 he was awarded a Soros Society, Crime, and Communities Media Fellowship, and in 2005 he became a senior fellow at the Demos Foundation. His first book, Hard Time Blues, was published in 2002; his second book, Conned, was released in April 2006.

Monifa Akinwole Bandele was a 2004 recipient of the Ford Foundation Leaders for a Changing World Award. Currently she serves as the National Field Coordinator for Right to Vote, which is a national collaborative of the eight major civil rights organizations, whose campaign's mission is to end felony disfranchisement. She is the former Executive Director of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, a national human rights and racial justice organization, and a co-founder of the Black August Hip Hop Project, an international activist/artist alliance, with ties in Cuba, South Africa, and Brazil. Black August has raised over $25,000 for political prisoners in the United States and brought out tens of thousands of young adults in three countries. Bandele volunteers with MXGM’s Cop Watch project and is president of the Board of Directors for the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project

Joseph “Jazz” Hayden is an advocate for prisoners’ right to vote. He has a B.A. in Liberal Arts from SUNY New Paltz and an M.A. in Professional Studies from the New York Theological Seminary. He is a graduate of Harvard School of Divinity’s Summer Leadership Institute. Hayden is the lead plaintiff in the pending class action lawsuit Hayden v. Pataki, which challenges the constitutionality of New York State’s felony disenfranchisement statue. Previously, Hayden served as the Director of the New York City Project for the Restoration of the Vote, which entailed working with eight major civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, Sentencing Project, People for the American Way, Demos, and the Brennan Center for Justice. His responsibilities included organizing a citywide collation for former prisoners, service providers, community-based and faith-based organization, politicians, and others around the issue of felon disenfranchisement. Hayden is the founder and Executive Director of Prodigal Sons & Daughters, a social welfare organization whose goal is to build and develop a membership of 100,000 prisoners, parolees, and their families.

Kirsten Levingston directs the Brennan Center for Justice’s Criminal Justice Program, which advocates for fair and effective administration of justice by preventing crime, not merely punishing it, ensuring public safety, and promoting social reintegration for those who come into conflict with the law. The Center promotes rational sentencing policy and opportunities for prison diversion and rehabilitation, and seeks to increase economic opportunities for those with conviction histories.

Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Levingston directed the National Defender Leadership Project at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, where she helped public defender managers take more active and creative roles as system leaders. As an Associate at a Washington, D.C., based firm, she handled civil and criminal litigation, including trial work and appeals in State and Federal Court. Levingston served on President Clinton’s transition team in 1992 and in the U.S. Department of Justice as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division.

Levingston earned her B.A. magna cum laude in journalism and political science from University of Southern California (1987) and her J.D. from Harvard Law School (1990). She clerked for the Honorable Norma Holloway Johnson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (1990-92), and is admitted to practice in California and the District of Columbia, and in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jeff Manza is Professor of Sociology and Political Science, and the Associate Director of the Institute for Policy Research, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In the fall of 2006, he will be joining the faculty at New York University . He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of California–Berkeley in 1995. His research is in the area of social inequality, political sociology, and public policy. He has written on how different types of social identities and inequalities in the United States influence political participation, voting behavior, partisanship, and public opinion. He is the co-author of Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions (Oxford University Press, 1999); co-editor of Navigating Public Opinion: Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2002); and co-author of Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2006). He is now finishing a book entitled Why Welfare States Persist (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming in 2007).

Marc Mauer has directed programs on criminal justice reform for 20 years. He is the author of some of the most widely cited reports in the field of criminal justice, including Young Black Men and the Criminal Justice System and the Americans Behind Bars series comparing international rates of incarceration. Mauer has served as a consultant to the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and is a member of the American Bar Association's Committee on Race and the Criminal Justice System. His 1999 book, Race to Incarcerate, has been described by Kirkus Reviews as a "meticulously researched rejoinder to the war on crime." He is also the co-editor, with Meda Chesney-Lind, of Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, which examines the impact of incarceration policies on families and communities. Mauer directed state and nationwide efforts in criminal justice for the American Friends Service Committee from 1975-1986 and served as that organization's National Justice Communications Coordinator.

From 1987 to 2005 he served as Assistant Director of the Sentencing Project, a national organization which develops alternative sentencing programs and conducts research on criminal justice issues. In 2005, he became the Executive Director of the Sentencing Project. In 1991, he received the Helen L. Buttenweiser Award from the Fortune Society in New York, and in 1996, he received the Donald Cressey award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Mauer received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan.