Benjamin Miller

The following is the testimony I gave before the Maine State Legislature's Judiciary Committee in favor of Representative Nina Milliken's L.D. 1941, An Act to Implement Recommendations of the Commission to Examine Reestablishing Parole. Good morning Senator Carney, Representative Kuhn, and respected members of the Joint Standing Committee on Judiciary. My name is Benjamin Miller, and I am an associate of Society Impact of Portland, Maine. We are a statutory public benefit company that helps...

The integrity of a legal system is a single, interconnected web. When one strand breaks, the entire structure of justice collapses. Maine’s system is failing because we lack four essential pillars of a fair and just criminal justice system: constitutionally effective legal representation for all criminal defendants, a meaningful path to earned release through parole, formal prison oversight with real accountability and the ability for rehabilitated individuals to clear their records. Read my...

The following is the transcript of a speech given by Jonathan Gradess (August 5, 1947 -October 2, 2019) at the Seminar in Criminal Law of the Nassau County Bar Association on October 28, 1978. Gradess, who served as the director of the New York State Defenders Association from 1978 to 2017, was a towering figure in New York’s public defense community, and one of the most principled voices in American criminal justice reform. A lifelong advocate for the poor and marginalized, he devoted his...