YANA Town Hall: Advancing Prison Reform

SOCIAL JUSTICE: Advancing Prison Reform

Nearly 1 in 2 Americans has a family member who has experienced incarceration. Learn how 3 Yale nonprofit leaders are creating a more humane and just prison system.

SPEAKERS

Zelda Roland ’08, ’16 PhD is the Founding Director of the Yale Prison Education Initiative (YPEI) at Dwight Hall which offers for-credit Yale courses to individuals in Connecticut’s correctional facilities. YPEI, in partnership with the University of New Haven, will expand its educational offerings, giving the incarcerated the opportunity to earn college degrees for the first time. Their joint program recently received a $1.5M grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Uzoma “Zo” Orchingwa ’21 Law & SOM also holds an M.Phil in Criminology from the University of Cambridge. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ameelio which developed the nation’s first free prison communications platform. The mission of Ameelio is to reconnect the incarcerated with their loved ones through digital solutions that facilitate the free delivery of letters and video conferencing. Their ultimate goal is to decouple incarceration and profit.  |  |

Lauren Fine ’06, ’11 JD Duke, is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP) whose mission is to remove young people’s cases from the adult criminal justice system and obtain shorter more rehabilitative sentences for cases that cannot be removed. Lauren has advanced efforts to end the practice of sentencing children to life in prison without parole, including co-authoring amicus briefs to the US Supreme Court and state supreme courts. 

Join us for compelling discussions about best practices, trends, and careers in the social impact space.

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