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Former Texas Prison Bid'ness Bloggers

Fri, 03/23/2007 - 4:42pm — Kathleen

Kathleen Pequeño is a communications and technology specialist in Portland, Oregon. She was one of the original staff members of Western Prison Project (now Partnership for Safety and Justice), working to change the criminal justice system in Oregon, and has been writing for several years on the need for criminal justice reform and on the movement for criminal justice reform. She currently edits Justice Matters, the quarterly newsletter of Partnership for Safety and Justice.

Kathleen was first drawn into criminal justice reform through her work against domestic and sexual violence in the 1990s. Since 2000, she has worked in Oregon to create changes to the criminal justice system to redirect it away from expensive, ineffective punishments and towards effective solutions to preventing crime.

Her writing has covered many aspects of the need for change in the criminal justice system, including a piece about the proposed private prison in Northeast Portland she wrote in late 2006. As of November 2007, Kathleen is a former contributer to Texas Prison Bid'ness.

 

Nick Hudson is a student at the University of Texas at Austin studying philosophy  and government. He has worked on prison and criminal justice issues for two and a half years with the ACLU of Texas and Grassroots Leadership.

Nick worked to improve prison conditions as a volunteer and work-study with the ACLU of Texas Prison and Jail Accountability Project. He updated the ACLU of Texas Prisoner Resource Guide in 2007, and helped monitor conditions of confinement inside of Texas prisons. Nick also served as the ACLU of Texas legislative liaison for criminal justice sentencing during the 2007 legislative session.

Nick has worked against private prison expansion with Grassroots Leadership since January of 2006. He authored Ground Zero: The Laredo Superjail and the No Action Alternative in July of 2006, and has spoken for Grassroots Leadership at criminal justice hearings before the Texas Senate. Nick joined the Texas Prison Bid'ness blog in 2008 and left in 2011. 

 

Andrew Strong is a Magna Cum Laude graduate from St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, where he studied philosophy, ethics, and logic. Currently, he attends Texas Tech University's School of Law in Lubbock, Texas, where he is a 2013 candidate for a Doctor of Jurisprudence. There, he is the philanthropy chair for Delta Theta Phi, an international law fraternity, as well as the Junior American Bar Association representative for the law school.

Andrew became interested in the private prison industry in Texas during the research for his senior thesis to obtain his Bachelor's of Arts. Subsequently, he played a role in updating Grassroots Leadership's publication, "Considering a Private Jail, Prison, or Detention Center?..." Andrew joined Texas Prison Bid'ness in 2009 and moved on in 2011.