Vincent Schiraldi, Visiting Fellow

Vinny Schiraldi’s been fighting against the mass incarceration of adults and young people for 45 years. He likens his career to a three-legged stool. He started as an advocate and provider of alternatives to incarceration as founder and executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (San Francisco) and the Justice Policy Institute (Washington, D.C). He then became what one reporter called a “radical administrator” running Wasington, D.C.’s and later Maryland’s youth justice systems (both of which he had criticized as an advocate) and New York City’s probation and corrections departments. He counts four different mayors and one governor as former bosses. Along the way, he has taught at Harvard and Columbia, where he co-founded the Columbia Justice Lab. The through-line to Vinny’s career has been developing humane and innovative policies consistent with public safety. What fuels his work? The hope that we can treat people entangled in the legal system the way we would want our loved ones treated in the same circumstances.