News & Commentary written by jasmine Sankofa

jasmine Sankofa is the 2017-19 Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union.

As a fellow, jasmine researched and published a joint report documenting the experiences of mothers separated from their children during and after pre-disposition incarceration in Oklahoma jails. At the ACLU, jasmine works on criminal justice advocacy and litigation. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, jasmine clerked for the Honorable Ronald L. Ellis of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and was a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow placed at a harm reduction organization serving persons engaged in sex work and/or drug use in Washington, D.C. jasmine graduated from UCLA School of Law with specializations in Critical Race Studies and Public Interest Law and Policy. While in law school, jasmine was a student in the Youth & Justice and International Human Rights clinics, was a co-chair of the re-entry legal clinic and education law clinic, and interned at the Vera Institute of Justice, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services in South Africa, and the Los Angeles HIV Law and Policy Project.