Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph.D., is the Director of Research at The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization engaged in research and advocacy for criminal legal reform. She conducts and synthesizes research on criminal legal policies, with a focus on
racial disparities,
lengthy sentences, and the
scope of reform efforts. Her report,
“A Second Look at Injustice,” helped to lay the groundwork for a growing, powerful tool to curb mass incarceration: second look policies that enable extreme sentences to be re-evaluated. She has advised and testified in support of proposed second look legislation in New York, Illinois, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Washington, DC. She also supports the implementation of these reforms through her work with the Second Look Network, a coalition of attorneys providing direct legal representation to tackle extreme sentences.
Nazgol regularly presents to academic, practitioner, and general audiences and her work has appeared in
The Washington Post,
The New York Times, and WNYC’s
On the Media. She serves on the District of Columbia Sentencing Commission. Nazgol earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles and an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
