Busboys and Poets Books Presents Change from Within: Reimagining the 21st-Century Prosecutor
Date and Time
Oct 27, 2022 6:00 pm
Location
14th & V
2021 14th St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20009
Oct 27, 2022 6:00 pm
14th & V
Busboys and Poets Books Presents CHANGE FROM WITHIN
Join us as we explore the stories of DAs aiming to change the criminal justice system from within.
Author Miriam Krinsky’s new book draws from the interviews she facilitated. This collection consist of stories about the challenges of prosecutors and the change they are trying to accomplish within, was published in partnership with Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP). Miriam is a former federal prosecutor as well, this unprecedented book includes intensely personal first-person profiles of thirteen transformative DAs. Each story is accompanied by an image inspired by the prosecutor and created by a formerly incarcerated artist.
Using the power of their office, despite its track record, including traditional numbers of cases which helped organize mass incarceration and harsh punishments. This spark of elected prosecutors decided to join a movement which required them to be vulnerable about their own journeys to office. As well how they plan to purposefully create change, the pushback received, and optimism of reform being an inside job.
Miriam will be joining on the Busboys stage to discuss this new release. They will be joined in conversation by Santana Deberry, Mark Dupree, and Parisa Deghani-Tafti. This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of CHANGE FROM WITHIN will be available for purchase before and during the event. Please note that this event will not be livestreamed.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books.
Miriam Krinsky has a unique combination of skills and expertise that enable her to lead FJP and serves as a resource for newly elected prosecutors. She previously served for 15 years as a federal prosecutor, both in Los Angeles and on an organized crime and narcotics task force in the Mid-Atlantic region. During her tenure as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Central District of California, Ms. Krinsky served as Chief of the General Crimes Section (supervising the work of over 50 new prosecutors) and Chief of the Criminal Appellate Section (overseeing the Office’s docket of over 1,000 criminal appeals); chaired the national Solicitor General’s Advisory Group on Appellate Issues; served on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee on Sentencing; and received the Attorney General’s highest national award for appellate work.
Ms. Krinsky has extensive experience in system change and reform of criminal justice institutions, policies and practice. In 2012, she served as the Executive Director of Los Angeles County’s Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence, charged with investigating allegations of excessive force by Sheriff’s deputies in L.A. County jails and developing recommendations for reform. Thereafter, Ms. Krinsky directed the newly elected Sheriff’s Transition Team and spent a year working inside the Sheriff’s Department as the Special Advisor to the Sheriff, assisting in implementing reforms within one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the nation. She also previously served as a Co-Director of the Transition Team for the newly elected Los Angeles City Attorney.
Ms. Krinsky has been involved over the years in the legal community, including serving as President of the Los Angeles County Bar Association (the first lawyer from the public sector to hold that position), five years (including two years as President) on the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, three years on the California Judicial Council, as a member of the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Foster Care and the American Bar Association’s Youth at Risk Commission, and was appointed by the California Supreme Court to serve a three-year term on the California State Bar Board of Trustees. She currently serves on the American Law Institute’s Sentencing Project Advisory group and the ALI Principles of Policing Advisory Group.
Parisa Dehghani-Tafti is the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church. Parisa was first elected to a four-year term in November 2019. Parisa comes to the office of Commonwealth’s Attorney with a twenty-year record of criminal justice reform as an innocence protection attorney, a public defender, and a law professor.
As an innocence protection attorney, Parisa served as the Legal Director for the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, where she successfully helped exonerate innocent individuals in DC, Virginia, and Maryland incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. She litigated at all levels of state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Virginia. As a public defender with the District of Columbia’s Public Defender Service, Parisa litigated cases of constitutional magnitude and won the first DNA exoneration in DC, which led the FBI to conduct an audit of all of its cases involving hair microscopy evidence; she also represented individual clients in parole proceedings. As a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center and at George Washington University School of Law, Parisa has helped train the next generation of criminal law attorneys, teaching courses on wrongful convictions.
Parisa graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a BA in philosophy and comparative literature and obtained a JD from New York University School of Law. She served as Press Chair and Member of the Steering Committee for the Arlington County Democratic Committee, and as a member of the Criminal Justice Committee for the Arlington Chapter of the NAACP. She is a long time resident of Arlington along with her husband, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and their two children who attend public school.
Mark A. Dupree, Sr., is the District Attorney of Wyandotte County, Kansas, the fourth largest county in the State of Kansas. Mr. Dupree leads an office of 60 employees and manages a significant budget each fiscal year. Mr. Dupree was sworn into office on January 9, 2017. The District Attorney’s office is responsible for keeping the community safe. DA Dupree and his team of excellent employees are implementing strategic and visionary policies to expand the function of the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office. Dupree’s focus is equitably charging and prosecuting crime, being proactive, and attacking violent crimes and crimes that affect the standard of living in the community. “I am focused on implementing the platform the citizens of Wyandotte County elected me to execute.” Mark’s four-point plan for making Wyandotte County safer, includes 1. Smart Prosecution; 2. Community Prosecutor’s Unit; 3. Fiscal Responsibility; and 4. Youth Investment.
Satana Deberry is a native of Hamlet, NC, Satana moved to Durham in 1991 to attend law school at Duke after graduating from Princeton University. After a brief stint practicing law in Washington, D.C., Ms. Deberry returned to NC to practice with her childhood friend and NC Central graduate, Stephany Hand Biggs. She practiced criminal defense law for several years before going to work at Self-Help. She later worked on issues of affordable housing and community economic development as Executive Director of the NC Housing Coalition. Satana has lived in Durham so long she remembers when the only place to eat lunch in downtown Durham was the Subway in the basement of the courthouse.
Ms. Deberry has an extensive and varied professional background that has included legal work, finance, and nonprofit management – working with institutions like TROSA and Habitat for Humanity. However, the one thing that has remained consistent throughout her career is her commitment to dismantling the systems that restrict the lives of poor people, families, communities of color, and other marginalized and underrepresented groups. Satana has worked throughout her career to help expand access to resources in the community for people with serious, sometimes life-threatening, personal and legal issues – whether it is criminal justice, access to housing, food and medicine, childcare or legal services. She deeply believes that every person deserves the right to succeed – to “bloom where they are planted.”
