Lauren-Brooke "L.B." Eisen

Senior Fellow

Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Senior Fellow in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program where she focuses on improving the criminal justice process through legal reforms. Eisen specifically focuses on financial and behavioral incentives that affect the justice system and how prosecutors can play a greater role in creating a more fair and just legal system.

Eisen is the author of Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Columbia University Press, 2017), which was one of the Marshall Project's Best Books of 2017. The Economist called Inside Private Prisons, “A deeply researched, scrupulously fair book about private prisons."

Previously Ms. Eisen was a Senior Program Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice in the Center on Sentencing and Corrections where she worked on policies that aimed to improve public safety while reducing prison populations. Ms. Eisen also served as an assistant district attorney in New York City where she served in the Appeals Bureau, the Criminal Court Bureau, and the Sex Crimes Special Victims Bureau where she prosecuted a wide range of misdemeanor and felony cases. Before entering law school, Ms. Eisen worked as a beat reporter for a daily newspaper in Laredo, Texas where she covered criminal justice issues. Ms. Eisen has taught an undergraduate seminar on mass incarceration at Yale, currently serves as an adjunct instructor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and supervises NYU Law students who participate in the Brennan Center Public Policy Advocacy Clinic. Eisen is currently drafting a chapter on New York State Criminal Procedure for a criminal law textbook (forthcoming Carolina Academic Press).

She has expertise in state sentencing and correctional reform, legislative drafting, bipartisan commissions, state corrections and courts, and implementing evidence-based criminal justice practices with departments of corrections. She also serves on the Advisory Council of the New York City Bar’s Task Force on Mass Incarceration and on the transition committee for Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.

Her work has been published by The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, The Loyola University New Orleans College of Law Journal of Public Interest Law, the Vera Institute of Justice, NY Daily News, Politico, MSNBC, Salon, Time, Vox, Fortune, US News & World Report, USA Today, The Marshall Project, National Book Review, The Justice Policy Institute, The American Constitution Society, The New York Law Journal, The Crime Report, Roll Call, The Huffington Post, The Times-Picayune, The Albany Times-Union, Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, and the Hill. She holds an AB from Princeton University and a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center.

 

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