Appendix C
Speaker Biographies
Scott Bales joined the Arizona Supreme Court in 2005 and became chief justice in 2014. He regularly teaches as an adjunct professor at the law schools at Arizona State and the University of Arizona. Justice Bales is also a member of the Council of the American Law Institute and formerly served as the chair of the Appellate Judges Conference of the American Bar Association’s Judicial Division. After completing his 5-year term as chief justice, Bales retired from the Arizona Supreme Court in July 2019. He then became the executive director of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS), at the University of Denver. Bales was named by the American Judges Association as the 2018 recipient of the Chief Justice Richard W. Holmes Award of Merit, which recognizes “outstanding contributions to the judiciary.” He also received the 2018 Ernest C. Friesen Award of Excellence. Before his appointment to the court, Bales had practiced law in Arizona for nearly 20 years as both a private and public lawyer. From 2001–2005, he worked at Lewis and Roca LLP, where his practice focused on appellate and complex litigation. He served as Arizona’s solicitor general from 1999–2001. Justice Bales also was a deputy assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Policy Development, a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, and a special investigative counsel for the Justice Department’s Inspector General. He clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Joseph T. Sneed III on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. After graduating from Michigan State University with degrees in history and economics, he received a master ’s degree in economics and his law degree from Harvard.
Judge Richard Blake is a proud member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe. In July 2018, Judge Blake retired from the Hoopa Valley Tribal Court bench after 17 years. Judge Blake remains as chief judge for the Redding Rancheria, judge of the Tolowa Dee-ni Nation Juvenile Healing to Wellness Court, and appellate justice for the Cow Creek Tribe. Judge Blake is the president of the board of the National American Indian Court Judges Association, having served on the board for the past 14 years. Judge Blake is the Region 2 representative representing courts in California, Nevada, and Hawaii. Judge Blake is the founder of the Northern California Tribal Court Coalition, which currently has a membership of five northern California Tribal Courts including the Hoopa, Yurok, Smith River, Trinidad Rancheria, Bear River, and Karuk Tribes. Judge Blake was also appointed as co-chair of the California Tribal State Forum. His vision resulted in the development of the forum now immortalized by the California Rules of Court, formally recognized by the California Judicial Council in February 2016. Judge Blake remains involved in the California Tribal State Forum but currently sits as member of the California Federal-Tribal Forum.
Catherine Gallagher is a professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Her research and teaching focuses on injury and health outcomes in vulnerable populations, particularly adolescents in the justice system. Her work on justice-involved adolescents has appeared in Pediatrics, the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Journal of Adolescent Health, and Social Science and Medicine. She has received funding for her work from government agencies and nonprofit organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Justice, the Pew Research Center, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Her methodological expertise lies in complex modeling, survey development, and evidence synthesis. She is currently focusing on how social exclusion—poverty in particular—inhibits individuals’ and communities’ abilities to prevent violence and other negative outcomes.
Francis (“Frankie”) V. Guzman is a juvenile justice attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. He is working to eliminate the practice of prosecuting and incarcerating children in California’s adult criminal justice system and advocates for alternative sentencing and local treatment for youth charged with serious offenses statewide. Raised in a poor, mostly immigrant community plagued by crime and drugs, Guzman experienced his parents’ divorce and his family’s subsequent homelessness at age 3 and the life-imprisonment of his 16-year-old brother at age 5, and lost numerous friends to violence. At age 15, he was arrested for armed robbery and, on his first offense, was sentenced to serve 15 years in
the California Youth Authority. Released on parole after 6 years, Guzman attended law school and became an expert in juvenile law and policy with a focus on ending the prosecution of youth as adults. Through partnerships with community organizations and advocacy groups, Guzman has helped lead the effort to reduce the number of youth prosecuted as adults and serving time in adult prisons. Recent successes include SB 260 (2013) & SB 261 (2015) Youth Offender Parole Hearings, and SB 382 (2015) Juvenile Fitness Hearings. Guzman played a significant role in developing the youth justice portion of the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 in partnership with the office of California Governor Jerry Brown.
Keenon M. James serves as deputy director for the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), where he oversees the organization’s mission to enact and impart fairness in policing and the criminal justice system. James combines more than 15 years of experience and expertise in criminal justice research, public safety policy, and community engagement to address the pressing issues related to community–police relations, civil rights, and the integrity of policing. Prior to joining the team at NOBLE, James served in several positions with the North Carolina Sheriff’s Association overseeing the organization’s administrative operations, professional development training series, state and federal grants, criminal justice programs, and legislative advocacy. From immigration, jails, and juveniles to cyberbullying and active shooters, James led statewide efforts to develop polices and laws that focus on public safety but that often intersect with economic, education, mental, and health care resources. James was instrumental in drafting legislation and implementing North Carolina’s Justice Reinvestment Act, which helped reduce state spending on prisons, alleviate several court sentencing disparities, and enacted reentry and anti-recidivism programs for returning citizens. Following his success in North Carolina, James went on to support the national Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI), a public–private partnership between the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Pew Charitable Trusts, focused on using data-driven research and analysis to increase public safety, reducing state spending on prisons, and reducing recidivism rates. Through his work on JRI legislation in Maryland, Texas, Kansas, and Alaska, James has supported efforts to change state laws that disproportionately affect communities of color, to reform the juvenile justice system, and to end the national mass incarceration epidemic for Black men. Under President Obama, James led the team at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance, which engaged communities and police departments in operational assessments following high-profile officer use-of-force incidents
including: Ferguson, Missouri (Michael Brown); St. Anthony, Minnesota (Philando Castile); North Charleston, South Carolina (Walter Scott); and San Francisco, California (Mario Woods). A graduate of North Carolina Central University, James has received honors from his alma mater for Excellence in Law Enforcement and the university’s 40 Under 40 alumni award in addition to numerous service awards from local and federal law enforcement agencies.
Joe Kelroy has served as the director of the AOC Juvenile Justice Services Division (JJSD) since 2014. He completed his undergraduate degree at Eastern Kentucky University. He furthered his education and obtained a master ’s degree in adult education from Northern Illinois University. Director Kelroy began his career in juvenile justice in 1982 in Illinois as a juvenile detention counselor and has worked in all areas of the juvenile court including probation, intake, detention, residential care, and management. He retired in 2014 from the Lake County Juvenile Court in Illinois and then moved to Arizona to pursue his continued passion for juvenile justice. Director Kelroy’s vision of providing all youth the opportunity to succeed has led the work of JJSD to include: evidence-based practices, including the implementation of the Arizona Youth Assessment System and Case Plan; Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative; Minor Victims of Sex Trafficking; Crossover Youth Practice Model; Correctional Program Checklist; Governor ’s Counsel for Opioid Epidemic Act; and Kids at Hope. The most recent initiative, Juvenile Justice System Improvement Project, in partnership with Georgetown and the University of Cincinnati, will focus on total system alignment with all initiatives that support the Chief Justice strategic agenda. The JJSD with Director ’s Kelroy’s leadership is committed to maintaining strong partnerships with the juvenile courts, probation departments, detention centers, and child welfare to serve as a resource to uplift their efforts and practices statewide.
Vera Lopez is a professor in justice studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University (ASU). Lopez is a school psychologist by training. Her research areas include delinquency, sexual risk taking, substance use, and prevention research. Most of her work focuses on system-involved girls’ relationships with parents and partners with a special emphasis on Latinas. Lopez’s work has been featured in a number of journals including the Journal of Family Issues, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Latino Studies, Journal of Adolescence, Youth & Society, Feminist Criminology, Family Relations, and Criminal Justice & Behavior. Her book Complicated Lives: Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice was published in 2017 with Rutgers University Press.
Bryon Matsuda is the Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services director. For more than 45 years Matsuda has had many juvenile justice system experiences, serving as a line juvenile probation officer, a juvenile district chief probation officer, director of two juvenile detentions and one residential treatment program, and now as a County Juvenile Court Services director. He has learned what works and what does not work (yet) for youth and their families involved in the juvenile justice system. He has been involved in many collaborative initiatives that have aimed for improved and organized services for youth and families involved in the juvenile justice system. He is a cocreator of the Step-Up Juvenile Justice Model that develops youth’s prosocial success skills and empowers parents in effective parenting actions.
Airto Morales is a site manager at the W. Haywood Burns Institute (BI). Morales’s social/criminal justice career sprung from a critical consciousness that arose from a firsthand narrative of having spent more than a decade of his own life navigating California’s penal system. Formal and informal education was a definite catalyst to truly understanding the collateral consequences of incarceration and how to successfully navigate a system that has truly devoured people of color over the last 40 years. After being released on parole Morales received his BA and MA, and ultimately lectured in the counseling and criminal justice departments for several years at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Morales also went back into the system and taught within the San Francisco County Jail and juvenile facilities for many years. Morales also has worked with the incarcerated and reentry population for the last 20 years supporting youth, women, and men on their journey of transitioning from a carceral setting to an academic setting at SFSU via Project Rebound and in the Peralta College System in Alameda County through Five Keys Schools and Programs.
Judge Kathleen Quigley was raised in Tucson, Arizona. She attended Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona Law School. She was admitted to the Arizona State bar in 1987. She was employed by the Pima County Attorney’s Office in November of 1987 and worked there in various capacities, including supervisory, until September 2003. In September 2003, she was appointed as a hearing officer at the Pima County Juvenile Court and then in April 2009 she was appointed by the Honorable Patricia Escher to serve as a commissioner at the Pima County Juvenile Court. In October 2012, she was appointed by Governor Jan Brewer to the Pima County Superior Court Bench. She was appointed as the presiding judge of Pima County Juvenile Court in July 2014. Judge Quigley is deeply committed to improvements in the child welfare system
for children and families and toward that end, chairs statewide committees and is a member of many other committees. She is a long-time member of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and has been a board member since July 2018.
Michal Rudnick is a project manager with Arizona’s Medicaid agency, AHCCCS (pronounced “access”). During her 20 years in state government, she has focused many of her efforts on implementing policies and processes to aid vulnerable individuals who are exiting incarceration. Arizona has utilized interagency teams to implement methods to divert individuals with mental health needs from incarceration. Rudnick facilitated a project to seek federal funding to secure innovative approaches to connect releasing individuals to community providers to address mental health, substance use disorder, and physical health needs. Rudnick has the privilege of collaborating with subject matter experts and stakeholders from around Arizona who are also passionate about improving diversion and reentry.
Linda A. Teplin is the Owen L. Coon Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, vice chair of research, and the director of the Health Disparities and Public Policy Program at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Since receiving her PhD from Northwestern University in 1975, she has focused on populations seldom examined in prior studies. She conducted the first large-scale, epidemiologic studies of psychiatric disorders in incarcerated men and women (1983–1995). Other studies have addressed criminalization of the mentally ill, correlates of violence, patterns of crime victimization, health service utilization, and HIV/AIDS risk behaviors. Her national honors include the National Institute of Mental Health MERIT Award (1995), the American Psychological Association’s career award for “Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy” (1992), the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Young Scientist Award (1990), the National Commission on Correctional Health Care’s Bernard Harrison Award of Merit (2001), and the Paula H. Stern Award for Outstanding Women in Science and Medicine (2019). She is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and a fellow in four divisions of the American Psychological Association. Teplin is also an expert on juvenile justice. She is the principal investigator of the Northwestern Juvenile Project, the first large-scale, longitudinal study of the health needs and outcomes of juvenile detainees. Her team has been tracking and re-interviewing 1,829 youth initially arrested and detained between 1995 and 1998. To date, participants have been interviewed up to 13 times. Published papers have addressed psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, health services, death rates, child maltreatment, trauma,
functional impairment, and HIV/AIDS risk behaviors. Teplin and her team have recently received grants from the U.S. Department of Justice and three institutes of the National Institutes of Health to study drug abuse, firearm involvement, and the consequences of a parent’s incarceration on their children. Next Generation focuses on identifying factors that promote mental health, reduce drug abuse, and increase the likelihood of positive outcomes in adulthood. Next Generation is the first prospective intergenerational study of a correctional population.
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