Cynthia Shank - Keynote Speaker
Cynthia Shank is a criminal justice advocate and proud mother of three daughters. In 2008, Cynthia received a 15 year mandatory minimum sentences for failing to report the crimes of her deceased ex-boyfriend six years earlier. She and her family experienced firsthand the pain of separation caused by unjust and excessive sentencing. Cynthia and her family’s story is documented in the Emmy Award Winning HBO documentary The Sentence.
Deborah Landis Lewis
Dr. Deb Landis Lewis is the Associate Program Director for the OB/Gyn residency at Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital Ann Arbor, Michigan. She received her medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh and completed her residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Magee-Womens Hospital (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center).
Her clinical interests include care for incarcerated women and other marginalized groups, disparities in women’s health, and group prenatal care. She serves as a consultant OB/Gyn for the Michigan Department of Corrections and as a liaison between Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility and a local partner hospital. Her research interests include the development of curricula and team-based training for perinatal units who care for incarcerated pregnant women.
Prior to coming to Michigan, Dr. Landis Lewis practiced general obstetrics and gynecology on an island in southeast Alaska. Her passion for global women’s health has led to opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Latin America, where she worked to improve maternal care and cervical cancer screening.
Francine Banner
Francine Banner is an attorney and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Her research focuses on gender, law, and social change in institutional and everyday contexts. She teaches in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and formerly served as Director of the UM-Dearborn Women’s Prison Project, a program through which faculty teach non-credit college courses to incarcerated women.
Margo S
chlanger
Professor Schlanger joined the Law School faculty in fall 2009. She teaches constitutional law, torts, and classes relating to civil rights and to prisons. She also founded and runs the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse.
In addition to this, Professor Schlanger does substantial work in civil rights litigation and prison and immigration reform. Professor Schlanger earned her J.D. from Yale in 1993. While there, she served as book reviews editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the Vinson Prize. She then served as law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1993 to 1995. From 1995 to 1998, she was a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where she worked to remedy civil rights abuses by prison and police departments and earned two Division Special Achievement awards.
Carolyn Mirretti
Carolyn Mirretti is a 2017 graduate from the University of Michigan school of social work. Since graduating, Carolyn has enjoyed working as a crisis interventionist specializing in suicide prevention and most recently as a medical case manager working with at-risk populations. Carolyn is passionate about utilizing research and data analysis to create effective interventions and expand client access to resources on a communal scale. She is especially interested in working with the intersections of social policy, poverty, mental illness, and incarceration. In her spare time, Carolyn is a part of “The Good Neighbor Project” run through Michigan’s Criminal Justice Program.
