Vera Institute of Justice

Join us for the next Neil A. Weiner Research Speaker Series event with Azadeh Zohrabi of the Ella Baker Center. She will present on findings from their recent report, Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families, which proves that the costs of locking up millions of people are much deeper than we think—when we lock up individuals, we also break apart their families and communities. This new report reveals the overwhelming debt, mental and physical ailments, and severed family bonds that are some of the hidden consequences of mass incarceration in the United States.

Azadeh is the National Campaigner at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights where she works with communities and policymakers on ending mass criminalization and incarceration. As the daughter of two formerly incarcerated parents, Azadeh is intimately familiar with the intergenerational impacts of imprisonment and is dedicated to reducing the number of lives damaged by incarceration. She brings a lifetime of personal experience and more than 10 years of advocacy and research experience to her work, having focused specifically on juvenile justice, women in prison, solitary confinement, and racial justice throughout the course of her career. An attorney by training, Azadeh previously worked as a Soros Justice Fellow at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children where she served on the litigation team representing Pelican Bay prisoners in the federal lawsuit which resulted in a landmark agreement to end indefinite solitary confinement in California. Azadeh’s work has been cited by courts, attorneys, and scholars, and has been featured in the New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Ebony, Mother Jones, and Al Jazeera.