Vera Institute of Justice

Lindsay's work aims to prevent and end the incarceration of girls in America by reforming unnecessarily punitive law enforcement practices and creating pathways to long-term well-being, safety and justice for girls in their communities. She leads the Project for Gender Equity in Health and Justice, which implements public health solutions to violence and incarceration for girls and LGBT/GNC youth of color. Prior to joining Vera, Lindsay was a post-graduate policy and advocacy fellow at the Ms. Foundation for Women. There she co-authored a groundbreaking report, The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girl’s Story, which was published through the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality in 2015. The report systematically exposes the widespread incarceration of girls of color in America as a direct result of their status as victims of violence. It creates a framework for understanding girls’ delinquency as a problem rooted in gender and racial stereotypes and our societal failure to protect girls’ safety, well-being and opportunity. The sexual abuse to prison pipeline framework has changed the narrative on girls’ incarceration in the United States and has become the impetus for national efforts to reform policies and practices that criminalize survivors of gender-based violence.