
Michele Deitch
LBJ School of Public Affairs | UT School of Law
Michele Deitch holds a joint appointment as a Senior Lecturer at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the School of Law at The University of Texas at Austin. She is an attorney with more than 30 years of experience working on criminal justice and juvenile justice policy issues with state and local government officials corrections administrators, judges and advocates.
Her areas of specialty include independent oversight of correctional institutions, prison conditions, the management of youths in custody, and juveniles in the adult criminal justice system. She co-chairs the American Bar Association's Subcommittee on Correctional Oversight and helped draft the ABA's Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners. She has authored numerous articles about correctional oversight, including a 50-state inventory of prison oversight models, as well as many reports on juvenile justice that have received national attention. Her TEDx talk, "Why are we trying kids as adults?," was named a TEDx Editor's Pick in January 2015.
Prior to entering academia, she served as a federal court-appointed monitor of conditions in the Texas prison system, as the policy director of Texas' sentencing commission, as general counsel to the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee and as an independent consultant to justice system agencies across the country. She holds degrees from Harvard Law School, Oxford University, and Amherst College.
More:
- Report: COVID and Corrections: A Profile of COVID Deaths in Custody in Texas (November 2020)
- Report: Recommended Strategies for Sheriffs and Jails to Respond to the COVID-19 Crisis (March 2020)
- Advisory Board member, Urban Institute Prison Research and Innovation Initiative (2019)
- Member, Texas Supreme Court Children’s Commission Task Force on Dual Status Youth (July 2019)
- Chair, Travis County Sheriff Advisory Council on proposed new women's jail facility (July 2018)
- Special event host: (IN)VISIBLE: Vulnerable People in the Criminal Justice System (4/13/18)
- Podcast: "This Is Democracy: Prison Reform" (January 2019)
- TEDx talk, "Why are we trying kids as adults?" (January 2015)
- Independent Correctional Oversight Mechanisms Across the United States: A 50-State Inventory (Pace Law Review, 2010)
- Testimony about juvenile justice issues, Texas House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee (2/7/19; at 1:11)
- CHASP Ambassador interview: A Conversation with CHASP Faculty Fellow Michele Deitch (1/22/19)
In the News:
- Texas prisons, jails worst COVID-19 hotspots of any in US (San Francisco Times, 11/9/20)
- Releasing Inmates, Screening Staff: U.S. Jails and Prisons Rush to Limit Virus Risks (New York Times, 3/22/20)
- As COVID-19 Measures Grow, Prison Oversight Falls (The Marshall Project, 3/17/20)
- Sudden Deaths Behind Bars (Gatehouse Media, 7/12/19
- Reports show no progress at Texas’ teen lockups (Houston Chronicle, 7/5/19)
- 'They Love Their Kids': Texas Lawmakers Want To Send Fewer Moms To Prison (NPR, 5/7/19)
- A Tale of Two Prison Systems (Texas Observer, 3/27/19)
- ‘It’s a crisis’: Nearly one in three guards left the Texas prison system last year (Houston Chronicle, 1/25/19)
- Texas House, Senate budget plans tens of millions apart on prisoner health care (Texas Tribune, 1/18/19)
- Why adult certification won't be an easy call for 15-year-old Dallas boy accused of rape, murder (Dallas News, 12/25/18)
- Travis County Sheriff Still Pushing for New Women's Jail (Spectrum News, 12/20/18)
- Texas prisons to start 3D-printing dentures for toothless inmates (Houston Chronicle, 12/10/18)
- LBJ’s Michele Deitch joins the U.S. Supreme Court Bar (LBJ School, 11/30/18)
- This For-Profit Prison Moves Puerto Rican Inmates 1,800 Miles From Home (Bloomberg, 10/29/18)
- Solitary Confinement, Jail Deaths Rock Race For Sheriff In California (The Appeal, 10/29/18)
- LBJ’s Michele Deitch presents research on the importance of prison oversight and transparency at international conference (LBJ School of Public Affairs, 10/22/18)
- Task force calls for oversight committee to address Hawaii's inmate suicide rate (CorrectionsOne.com, 10/9/18)
- A New Jail for Travis County? (The Austin Chronicle, 9/7/18)
- Defense lawyers urge Harris County to stop jailing inmates in Louisiana (Houston Chronicle, 8/29/18)
- Prison Strike Organizers Aim to Improve Conditions and Pay (New York Times. 8/26/18)
- Harris County inmate hangs herself, marking jail's 2nd apparent suicide in a month (Houston Chronicle, 8/15/18)
- State jail standards can't protect employees, prisoners (Palestine Herald Press, 8/1/18)
- After $7 million legal fight over air conditioning, Texas prison system touts new heat safety policies (Texas Tribune, 7/26/18)
- In bid to boost safety, juvenile justice agency reviewing violent youth for possible transfer (Houston Chronicle, 1/22/18)
- What's Going On in Our Prisons? (New York Times, 1/4/16)
- Kids or Criminals?: Growing Up and Getting Out (The Dallas Morning News, August 2015)
- County jail reform: Creation of a safety study committee is a big step in addressing Texas’ jail problems (Houston Chronicle, 8/19/15)
- Why Jails Have More Suicides than Prisons (The Marshall Project, 8/4/15)
- Bring Texas jails out of the shadows (Texas Tribune TribTalk, 7/29/15)
- Could better mental health care have saved Sandra Bland’s Life? (Texas Standard, 7/23/15)