Mass Imprisonment and the Disappearing Voters

Director of the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch
Panelist

Jamie Fellner, Esq. is director of the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch, which addresses a wide range of human rights abuses in the United States—including police abuse, inhuman or degrading conditions of confinement, the mistreatment of immigrants; the death penalty; and discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities. Since September 11, U.S. government anti-terrorist policies have been a program priority as well. Fellner is the author or co-author of numerous Human Rights Watch reports, including Beyond Reason: The Death Penalty and Offenders with Mental Retardation; Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs; Race and Drug law Enforcement in Georgia; Cruel and Usual: Disproportionate Sentences for New York Offenders; Red Onion State Prison: Supermaximum Security in Virginia; Out of Sight: Supermaximum Security Confinement in the United States; Cold Storage: Supermaximum Security Confinement in Indiana; and Losing the Vote: Felony Disenfranchisement in the United States.

East Coast coordinator of the New Leadership Policy Group
Panelist

Joseph "Jazz" Hayden is East Coast coordinator of the New Leadership Policy Group, a national organization of ex-offenders who are CEOs or executive directors of community based programs. He is also producer of the talk radio program On the Count (WBAI 99.5 FM), which addresses criminal and social justice issues that disproportionately impact the black and Latino communities. The host, Eddie Ellis, and Hayden are both former prisoners who bring a unique perspective to the program. Hayden advocates for prisoners' right to vote; he currently has a class action lawsuit pending in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, Hayden v. Pataki et al., which challenges the constitutionality of the New York State felony disenfranchisement statute. Hayden was born and raised in Harlem and holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from SUNY New Paltz and an M.A. in Professional Studies from the New York Theological Seminary.

Assistant Director of The Sentencing Project
Moderator

Marc Mauer is assistant director of The Sentencing Project, a national organization that develops alternative sentencing programs and conducts research on criminal justice issues. He has directed programs on criminal justice reform for 25 years and is 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, which compares international rates of incarceration. His 1995 report on racial disparity and the criminal justice system led the New York Times to editorialize that the report "should set off alarm bells from the White House to city halls—and help reverse the notion that we can incarcerate our way out of fundamental social problems."

His 1999 book on criminal justice policy, Race to Incarcerate, was named a semifinalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Mauer is co-editor of a new book, Invisible Punishment, a collection of essays on the social cost of imprisonment. He has served as a consultant to the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Institute of Corrections and is a member of the American Bar Association's Committee on Race and the Criminal Justice System. He has testified before Congress, speaks at national and international conferences, and appears frequently on radio and television networks. Mauer is frequently quoted in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today.

Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Panelist

Janai S. Nelson is an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., where she litigates voting rights and redistricting cases on behalf of African Americans and other underserved communities and actively pursues her interest in criminal justice issues. She is also vice president of a charter school in New York City. Nelson was a litigation associate at the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson for two years prior to joining LDF and is the 1998 recipient of the NAACP LDF/Fried Frank Fellowship. She received a B.A. from New York University in 1993 and graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 1996, after which she clerked for the Honorable Theodore McMillian on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and the Honorable David H. Coar on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. In law school, she was articles editor of the UCLA Law Review, consulting editor of the National Black Law Journal, and associate editor of the UCLA Women's Law Journal.

Program and Policy Director for DemocracyWorks
Panelist

Americo Santiago is program and policy director for DemocracyWorks, where he coordinates its election and voting reform efforts and works on its legislative agenda. A Vietnam veteran, Americo was the national vice president of ACORN and vice president of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights Inc. in the 1980s. In 1986, he served one term as a Connecticut city councilman before being elected to the Connecticut legislature in 1988; he represented Bridgeport for three terms. Between 1995 and 1999, Santiago was assistant secretary of state for Connecticut, leading voter registration efforts in that office.