Martin

The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research hosts the annual Iscol Family Program for Leadership Development in Public Service Lecture Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 7:30 p.m. in G10 Biotech. Glenn E. Martin, founder and president of JustLeadershipUSA and a leading voice for reform of the U.S. prison system, will deliver “Mass Incarceration: An Experience Shared by 65 Million Americans.” His talk is free and open to all.

Martin, a national leader in the criminal justice reform movement, is at the forefront of the effort to bring the voices of those directly impacted by mass incarceration into the criminal justice reform conversation. His organization, JustLeadershipUSA, is dedicated to cutting the U.S. correctional population in half by 2030. JLUSA empowers people most affected by incarceration to drive policy reform. Martin served six years in a New York state prison and advocates closing New York City’s Rikers Island Correctional Facility, the site of numerous allegations of abuse.

Prior to founding JLUSA, Martin served as vice president of public affairs for the Fortune Society and as co-director of the National HIRE Network at the Legal Action Center. Martin also co-founded the Education From the Inside Out Coalition. He was a 2014 Echoing Green Fellow, a 2012 America’s Leaders of Change National Urban Fellow and is a member of the governing boards of the College and Community Fellowship, Million Hoodies and the California Partnership for Safe Communities. He serves on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Council on Community Re-entry and Reintegration and on the boards of several other organizations and anti-mass incarceration initiatives.

Martin was included on the 2015 Root 100 list of most influential African-Americans. In 2016, Martin was appointed to the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform to look at the possibility of closing Rikers Island. Martin appears often on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN and C-SPAN.