Jody Kent Lavy will serve as a Stoneleigh Fellow with the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. In this role, she will build political will for, and seek to expand the use and availability of, restorative justice practices in cases of serious harm involving young people.
As the founding executive director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, Jody was instrumental in building and implementing a national strategy to ban the condemnation of children to die in prison, or “juvenile life without parole” (JLWOP), which has dramatically curtailed the use and availability of this practice. She strategically engaged with the media and leaders across the country to put this issue on the map and build broad buy-in for its abolition.
Prior to joining the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, Jody worked with the National Prison Project of the ACLU in Washington, DC and the ACLU of Southern California, where she grew her expertise in criminal justice reform and built a track record of cultivating political will for bipartisan policy change.
Jody holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Boston College and a master’s degree in public management from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.
