Lecture
Lunch lecture Michele Deitch: What’s going on in US prisons?
- Date
- Monday 24 November 2025
- Time
- Location
-
Kamerlingh Onnes Building
Steenschuur 25
2311 ES Leiden - Room
- B0.16
This semester, the Institute for Criminal Law & Criminology - Leiden University is honored to host Michele Deitch, one of the leading international experts on prison oversight and conditions of confinement. Michele is a Distinguished Senior Lecturer with a joint appointment at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also directs the renowned Prison and Jail Innovation Lab (PJIL): a national policy resource center dedicated to improving the safety, humanity, and accountability of prisons and jails.
For over 38 years, Michele has shaped criminal justice and juvenile justice policy in the United States. Her work focuses on three critical areas:
- Systems of independent oversight of prisons and jails
- Improving conditions of confinement, especially for vulnerable populations
- Deaths in custody
Michele helped draft the American Bar’s Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners, and recently became Chair of the International Experts’ Network on Prison Oversight and Human Rights for the International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA). Michele also created and operates the National Resource Center on Prison Oversight, which provides tools, research, and best practices for strengthening accountability in places of detention. Before entering academia, she served as a federal court-appointed monitor of conditions in the Texas prison system, as a criminal justice policy advisor to Texas legislators, and as the policy director of Texas’s sentencing commission.
During her research leave this year, Michele is examining international oversight models, including National Preventive Mechanisms, to understand what lessons can help improve prison oversight in the United States. After spending the spring at Oxford’s Centre for Criminology, she now joins us in Leiden, where she looks forward to engaging with colleagues working on detention, human rights, and accountability.