Resume

• 2006

  Georgetown University Law Center

  Washington D.C.

  Taught and supervised 3L clinic students in all aspects of domestic violence and other family law litigation in D.C. Superior Court. Developed a seminar entitled \"The Collateral Consequences of the Criminal Justice System: A Primer for Advocates of Domestic Violence Survivors.\"

  Clinical Teaching Fellow

  Georgetown University Law Center

• 2004

  New Jersey Institute for Social Justice

  William S. Boyd School of Law

  UNLV

  Newark

  NJ

  Wrote policy briefs and other advocacy materials

  worked on model programs

  and provided community-based technical assistance and training to support more positive prisoner reentry outcomes. Focused on the policy implications of the civil collateral consequences of criminal convictions that affect families

  especially those resulting from child support debt incurred by parents during incarceration.

  Reentry Policy Analyst

  New Jersey Institute for Social Justice

  Legalese

  Skadden Fellowship

  Skadden Arps Fellowship Foundation

  Public Interest Student of the Year

  City University of New York School of Law

  Outstanding Professor at CUNY School of Law

  Women's Law & Policy Fellowship

  Georgetown University Law Center

  Law Professor of the Year

  William S. Boyd School of Law

  2014 Gala Honoree

  Black Law Students Association

  CUNY

  Thurgood Marshall Fellowship

  Civil Rights Committee

  Assn. of the Bar of the City of New York

  Georgetown University Law Center

  Master of Laws (LLM)

  awarded with Distinction

  Advocacy

  School of Visual Arts

  Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.)

  with honors

  Graphic Design

  City University of New York School of Law

  Doctor of Law (J.D.)

  Battered Womens Rights Clinic; Phi Alpha Delta

• 2000

  Ann

  Cammett

  Legal Aid Society

  Civil Division

  City University of New York School of Law

  City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law

  Brooklyn

  NY

  Designed a prisoner reentry program that provided comprehensive civil legal services to formerly incarcerated women and their families

  including family law representation

  a \"rap sheet\" project

  and assistance in navigating statutory bars to housing

  public benefits

  employment

  and occupational licensing.

  Skadden Fellow - Staff Attorney

  Legal Aid Society

  Civil Division

  Long Island City

  NY

  Director

  Family Law Concentration

  Professor of Law

  City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law

  Chief Academic Officer of the #1 Public Interest Law School in the United States!

  City University of New York School of Law

  William S. Boyd School of Law

  UNLV

  Las Vegas

  NV

  Founder and Co-Director of the Family Justice Clinic

  an innovative Family Law program with a particular focus on serving prisoners

  their families

  and other community members affected by the child welfare system and other forms of state intervention

  through direct representation

  legislative advocacy and community education.

  Associate Professor of Law

• New Jersey Institute for Social Justice

  Through his words and deeds

  Len was an indomitable force for social justice in New Jersey - and a loyal Institute ally and supporter.

  New Jersey Institute for Social Justice

  Public Square Live: VAWA @ 20: Reflecting

  Re-imagining & Looking Forward - CUNY School of Law

  A discussion on how VAWA and lessons from the last 20 years can inform policies that promote gender

  racial and other forms of equality

  while working to end intimate partner and other forms of violence.

  Public Square Live: VAWA @ 20: Reflecting

  Re-imagining & Looking Forward - CUNY School of Law

  Family Law

  Domestic Violence

  Public Policy

  University Teaching

  Criminal Justice

  Collateral Consequences

  Clinical Supervision

  Deadbeats

  Deadbrokes & Prisoners

  Historically

  child support policy has targeted absent parents with aggressive enforcement measures. Such an approach is based on an economic resource model that is increasingly irrelevant

  even counterproductive

  for many low-income families. Specifically

  modern day mass incarceration has radically skewed the paradigm on which the child support system is based

  removing millions of parents from the formal economy entirely

  diminishing their income opportunities after release

  and rendering them ineffective economic actors. Such a flawed policy approach creates unintended consequences for the children of these parents by compromising a core non-monetary goal of child support system – parent-child engagement – as enforcement measures serve to alienate parents from the formal economy after reentry and drive them underground and away from their families.\n\nIn this article I propose that lawmakers harmonize child well-being rhetoric with policy by mitigating the counterproductive effects of federal and state law on incarcerated parents

  an issue that is undoubtedly of national concern. I also invite readers to reimagine the normative contours of child supportive practices by recognizing that child support alone will never be an effective substitute for broader antipoverty measures.

  Deadbeats

  Deadbrokes & Prisoners

  Legal barriers or collateral consequences arising from criminal convictions came to the forefront of the legal and policy discourse at the dawn of the twenty-first century

  as the population of people with criminal convictions skyrocketed. These barriers act as restrictions to post-incarceration reentry into society

  including the resumption of employment

  occupational licensing

  access to housing and public benefits

  driving privileges

  educational loans

  immigration

  voting rights

  and other means of economic survival and civic re-engagement. \n\nWhat is barely examined are the ways in which these barriers affect family law

  specifically in the area of child support and the debt accrued by incarcerated parents. This article examines the recent convergence of incarceration

  collateral sanctions

  and child support debt

  and argues that the current system of aggressive support enforcement against incarcerated parents serves as a de facto civil sanction in many jurisdictions

  creating yet another collateral consequence that serves as a prominent barrier to successful reentry.

  Expanding Collateral Sanctions: The Hidden Costs of Aggressive Child Support Enforcement Against Incarcerated Parents

  Letter to the Editor: When ‘Deadbeat Dads’ Are Jailed

  The criminal justice system exacts a toll on some Lesbian

  Gay

  Bisexual

  Transgender

  and Queer (LGBTQ) communities. The experience of living in poverty and the concomitant exposure to a variety of governmental systems puts all poor

  but especially LGBTQ low-income people of color

  at risk of incarceration. What typically goes unexamined are the myriad ways that LGBTQ people are drawn into and experience the carceral system because of sexual identities and expression. This negative effect surfaces at every conceivable level: the marginalization and subsequent criminalization of queer youth; anti-gay bias in the judicial system; the rerouting of domestic violence cases from the civil to the criminal system in states where LGBTQ people don’t meet the statutory definition of family; exposure to rape and trauma during incarceration in prisons and jails; and in disproportionate sentencing

  particularly death penalty cases.\n\nActivists have long engaged in a wide range of worthwhile initiatives in pursuit of social justice. However

  it is less common that groups have an unambiguous mandate to develop a philosophical and strategic approach that integrates organizing across issues of class

  race

  gender and sexual identity. Nevertheless

  structural inequality operates through intersecting subordinations to make some more vulnerable to criminalization. In this essay

  I argue that LGBTQ and civil rights communities should come to terms with and prioritize the concerns of low-income LGBTQ people who have been profoundly affected by the criminal justice system.

  Queer Lockdown: Coming to Terms with the Ongoing Criminalization of LGBTQ Communities

  The disenfranchisement of felons has long been challenged as anti-democratic and disproportionately harmful to communities of color. Critiques of this practice have led to the gradual liberalization of state laws that expand voting rights for those who have served their sentences. Despite these legal developments

  ex-felons face an increasingly difficult path to regaining the franchise. This article argues that

  for ex-felons in particular

  criminal justice debt can serve as an insurmountable obstacle to the resumption of voting rights and broader participation in society. This article uses the term “carceral debt” to identify criminal justice penalties levied on prisoners

  “user fees” assessed to recoup the operating costs of the justice system

  and debt incurred during incarceration

  including mounting child support obligations.\n\nIn recent years

  another disturbing voting rights challenge has emerged that has received little attention from scholars. State appellate and federal courts across the country have affirmed the constitutionality of statutes that require ex-felons to satisfy the payment of all carceral debts in order to resume voting privileges. Such a paradigm has a clearly differential impact on the poor: if only those who can pay their debts after a criminal conviction can regain the right to vote

  those who cannot will remain perpetually disenfranchised

  rendering them “shadow citizens” and raising a host of policy and constitutional questions.

  Shadow Citizens: Felony Disenfranchisement and the Criminalization of Debt

  This report is from the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice and the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice

  which convened a series of problem-solving roundtables on “Incarceration

  Reentry and the Family” over a 7 month period in 2005 and 2006. Building on the findings of the New Jersey Reentry Roundtable and a growing concern around the state about how to improve outcomes for the more than 70

  000 individuals expected to return home from prison over the subsequent five year period

  the roundtable examined the complex role that families – broadly defined – play in the lives of prisoners during incarceration and after their release.

  Lori Scott-Pickens

  Johnna Christian

  Nancy Fishman

  Cammett