Laurie Jo Reynolds

Laurie Jo Reynolds

Laurie Jo Reynolds is a policy advocate and community organizer who has spent two decades opposing the demonization, warehousing and social exclusion of people in the criminal legal system — especially focusing on solitary confinement and public conviction registries, extreme punishments that emerged in the punitive turn of the 1990s.

Reynolds also was the organizer of Tamms Year Ten, the grassroots campaign to close the Illinois state supermax prison, shuttered by former Gov. Pat Quinn in 2013.

She coordinates the Chicago 400 Alliance, a grassroots coalition led by formerly incarcerated people who challenge conviction registries and housing banishment laws.

Note for reporters: Reynolds requests that reporters use person-first language in their stories related to her work.