5 Black Female Leaders in the Criminal Justice Reform Movement

In celebration of Black History Month, WPA is highlighting five unforgettable Black female leaders in the criminal justice reform movement.

Angela Davis (b. 1944; Birmingham, AL)

Angela Davis is a scholar, activist, and author known for her work in civil rights, social justice, and prison abolition. Davis gained national attention in the 1970s when she was wrongfully imprisoned and later acquitted of charges, fueling her lifelong commitment to criminal justice reform and challenging the prison-industrial complex. She was a member of Critical Resistance—an organization that aims to abolish the prison industrial system—and thereafter became a leading advocate for such change. 

In addition to prison reform, Davis has also advocated for education, women’s rights, racial equality, and LGBTQ+ rights; in 1997, she came out as a lesbian, and remains to be an influential advocate for the queer community today. Davis has written extensively on systemic racism, mass incarceration, and the need for transformative justice, including in her influential book Are Prisons Obsolete?. Through her activism and scholarship, Davis continues to be a prominent voice in the fight for criminal legal system reform.

Mariame Kaba (b. 1971; New York, NY)

Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, and advocate for prison abolition and transformative justice. With decades of experience in grassroots activism, including serving on nonprofit boards and co-founding various projects like Chicago Freedom School and Survived and Punished, she has been a leading voice in movements against mass incarceration, policing, and gender-based violence. Kaba is the founder of Project NIA, an organization focused on ending youth incarceration through community-based alternatives. She is also a strong proponent of mutual aid and restorative justice, emphasizing the need to build systems that address harm without relying on punishment and incarceration. Through her writing, including her book We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, and her organizing work, Kaba inspires and mobilizes communities toward dismantling the prison-industrial complex and creating more just, caring, and equitable societies.

Dorothy E. Roberts (b. 1956; Chicago, IL)

Dorothy E. Roberts is a legal scholar, sociologist, and activist whose work focuses on the intersections of race, gender, and the criminal justice system. She is particularly known for her research on the ways systemic racism impacts Black women and families, especially through the child welfare and criminal legal systems. In her groundbreaking book Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, Roberts exposes how the foster care system disproportionately targets Black families, functioning as an extension of mass incarceration. She has also written extensively on the racialized history of reproductive justice and medical ethics. 

Currently, she is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a professor in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School, where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights. Additionally, she is the founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society. Through her scholarship and advocacy, Roberts challenges punitive state interventions and calls for transformative approaches that center on community-based care, abolition, and racial justice.

Adrienne Maree Brown (b. 1978; El Paso, TX)

Adrienne Maree Brown (she/they) is a writer, activist, and facilitator known for her work in social justice movements, including criminal justice reform and abolition. Rooted in Black feminist and Afrofuturist traditions, as well as movement, somatic, and science fiction, her work emphasizes collective care, healing, and transformative justice as alternatives to punitive systems. Among other titles, they are the author of Holding Change, Emergent Strategy, and We Will Not Cancel Us, which explores how movements can be more adaptive, interconnected, and sustainable. Brown’s work deeply influences abolitionist organizing by encouraging new ways of thinking about justice, accountability, and community transformation. Through her writing, workshops, and organizing, Brown helps shape the vision for a world beyond prisons and punishment that is grounded in love, creativity, liberation, and pleasure.

Currently, she is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a professor in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School, where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights. Additionally, she is the founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society. Through her scholarship and advocacy, Roberts challenges punitive state interventions and calls for transformative approaches that center on community-based care, abolition, and racial justice.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore (b. 1950; New Haven, CT)

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a prison scholar, abolitionist, and activist whose work has been instrumental in shaping the modern prison abolition movement. She is a professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences and American Studies at the CUNY Graduate School, and the director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. In addition to co-founding many grassroots organizations—including California Prison Moratorium Project, the Central California Environmental Justice Network, and Critical Resistance, which advocates for abolishing prisons and encourages community-based solutions—she is renowned for her groundbreaking book Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, which examines how economic and racial forces drive mass incarceration. Gilmore has been a leading voice in exposing the connections between capitalism, systemic racism, and the expansion of the prison-industrial complex. Through her research, teaching, and activism, Gilmore continues to challenge the carceral system and advocate for transformative justice, emphasizing that “abolition is about presence, not absence”—building structures that promote care, equity, and true safety.