Lori James-Townes

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Lori James-Townes is the Director of Social Work Services for the Maryland Offices of Public Defender (OPD) and a consultant for the University of Maryland School of Social Work on partnership initiatives with the OPD. Lori is also a mitigation specialist and has been providing alternative sentencing and mitigation services for two decades. Lori began her career in criminal justice volunteering at the Baltimore City Jail. She realized that the young men she worked with were just like the men who lived in the Baltimore projects she once lived in as a child. Working with the women inmates she realized she could have been any one of them. Since those days she has dedicated her life to uncovering and conveying the factors that impede her clients from remaining out of the criminal justice system. Lori serves on the board for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and is the Chairperson for the organization’s annual conference. She also served as President of the National Alliance of Sentencing Advocates and Mitigation Specialists for seven terms. She was named Alumni of the Decade by the University of Maryland School of Social Work Alumni Association and is a doctoral candidate at Morgan State University, completing a dissertation on former death row inmates now serving life sentences and their families.