Jared Mollenkof
Contributor
Jared Mollenkof is an associate professor of law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Minnesota. After a decade working in the indigent defense system, with the hope of having some part in limiting the most harmful aspects of our criminal system, Mollenkof has taken up teaching with the hope of contributing to the conversations around harm, retribution, and safety. In this moment when abolition seems to be a framework more people are considering, Mollenkof sees opportunity. Moving towards abolitionist modes of being will allow for Black flourishing in America. As Mollenkof writes about the abolition of the for-profit cash bail system, mental health in the criminal system and indigent defense writ large, he is motivated primarily by a desire to see a less retributive America. He dreams of an America that makes us all safer by pushing for restoration over punishment. Mollenkof is from Tennessee, an alum of Georgetown University Law Center, and credits Southerners On New Ground with his political foundation.
