Premal Dharia

Premal Dharia is Coeditor-in-Chief and a founding editor of Inquest, and the Executive Director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration. For nearly fifteen years, Dharia worked on the criminal legal system’s front lines, representing individual clients as a public defender in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and the military commission at Guantanamo Bay. In 2014, Ms. Dharia was selected for a three-month fellowship to help build out and train three new public defender offices in Palestine. After years as a public defender, Ms. Dharia shifted to impact litigation as the Director of Litigation for Civil Rights Corps. Prior to her current role, she founded and directed the Defender Impact Initiative, which has advanced the role of public defenders as systemic change agents. Ms. Dharia is a nationally recognized expert in criminal law, policy, racial and carceral injustice, and the need for systemic change. She regularly speaks around the country on these issues, has written about them in such publications as The Washington Post, Slate, and Salon, and been interviewed as an expert for radio, podcasts, and in a variety of national and regional publications. Ms. Dharia graduated from Brown University with a degree in History and African-American Studies, with a focus on comparative post-colonial studies, and from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Photo Credit: Prescott Loveland