Prison break: Why conservatives turned against mass incarceration

Heather MacDonald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Her work at City Journal has canvassed a range of topics, including higher education, immigration, policing and racial profiling, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion. Her newest book, “The War on Cops”(Encounter Books, 2016), warns that raced-based attacks on the criminal-justice system are eroding the authority of law and endangering lives. In “Are Cops Racist?” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), Ms. MacDonald investigates the workings of the police, the controversy over racial profiling, and the antiprofiling lobby’s harmful effects on black Americans. She clerked for the Hon. Stephen Reinhardt, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and has testified before numerous US House and Senate Committees. In 1998, she was appointed to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s task force on the City University of New York. She has received the Civilian Valor Award from the New Jersey State Law Enforcement Officers, the Integrity in Journalism Award from the New York State Shields, the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration from the Center for Immigration Studies, and the Quill & Badge Award for Excellence in Communication from the International Union of Police Associations. A frequent guest on Fox News, CNN, and other TV and radio programs, Ms. MacDonald holds a B.A. in English from Yale University, an M.A. in English from the University of Cambridge, and a J.D. from Stanford University Law School.

Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration (SSA) and is an affiliate professor in the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division and the Department of Public Health Sciences. He is also codirector of the University of Chicago Crime Lab and a committee member of the Center for Health Administration Studies at the University of Chicago. He has published widely at the interface between poverty policy and public health. His research appears in such journals as Addiction, JAMA, American Journal of Public Health, Health Services Research, Pediatrics, and Social Service Review. Dr. Pollack has been appointed to three committees of the National Academy of Sciences. He graduated magna cum laude in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University and holds master’s and doctorate degrees in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Before SSA, Dr. Pollack was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at Yale University and taught health management and policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. His writings have appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Republic, and other popular publications. His American Prospect essay, “Lessons from an Emergency Room, Nightmare,” was selected for the collection Best American Medical Writing, 2009.

Vikrant Reddy is a senior research fellow at the Charles Koch Institute. He previously served as a senior policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), where he managed the launch of TPPF’s national Right on Crime initiative in 2010. He has also worked as a research assistant at the Cato Institute, as a law clerk to the Hon. Gina M. Benavides of the 13th Court of Appeals of Texas, and as an attorney in private practice. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas, and he serves on the Executive Committee of the Criminal Law Practice Group of the Federalist Society. Mr. Reddy is also an appointee to the US Commission on Civil Rights Texas State Advisory Committee. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, and he earned his law degree at the Southern Methodist University School of Law in Dallas.

Sally Satel is a resident scholar at AEI and the staff psychiatrist at Partners in Drug Abuse and Rehabilitation Counseling. Dr. Satel was an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University from 1988 to 1993. From 1993 to 1994, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow with the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. She has written widely in academic journals on topics in psychiatry and medicine and has published articles on cultural aspects of medicine and science in numerous magazines and journals. Her essays have appeared in the 2003 and 2008 editions of “Best American Science Writing.” She has testified before Congress on veterans’ mental health and disability, federal funding for mental health, and substance abuse. Dr. Satel is author of “Drug Treatment: The Case for Coercion” (AEI Press, 1999) and “PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine” (Basic Books, 2001). She is the coauthor of “One Nation Under Therapy” (St. Martin’s Press, 2005) and “The Health Disparity Myth” (AEI Press, 2006) and editor of “When Altruism Isn’t Enough: The Case for Compensating Organ Donors” (AEI Press, 2009). She most recently coauthored “Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience” (Basic Books, 2013).

Steven Teles is an associate professor of political science at John Hopkins University. Previously, he was an associate professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and a visiting lecturer at Yale University Law School. His areas of specialty include social policy, law and public policy, and political analysis. Mr. Teles is the author and coauthor of several books, including “The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law” (Princeton University Press, 2008), in which he charts the success of the conservative legal establishment.