LUCY

Lucy Lang has spent her career working to ensure that everyone who is touched by the criminal justice system is treated with dignity. As the leader of a national criminal justice reform organization, former assistant district attorney, and former candidate to be the Manhattan DA, Lucy has always recognized criminal justice is about much more than successful prosecution: it requires deep consideration of communities, prevention, and rehabilitation.

Lucy's sense of purpose was shaped in large part by her grandfather, Eugene Lang, who grew up the son of a socialist labor organizer and New York City public school teacher. After achieving unanticipated business success, he decided to use his good fortune to adopt a class of middle schoolers in the New York City public schools to support them throughout their education and pay for them to attend college. Lang went on to establish the I Have a Dream Foundation, which supports public school students across the country, and later dedicated his remaining assets to supporting non-profits throughout New York.

It was her grandfather’s commitment to public service and her first-hand experience working in the justice system that lead Lucy to run for office in 2021, seeking to become the first woman District Attorney of Manhattan in a mission-driven campaign focused on those most affected by the criminal legal system.

Prior to her candidacy for Manhattan DA, Lucy served as the Director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution (IIP) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). There she worked with government, crime survivors, and system-impacted people on innovative criminal justice reforms related to trauma, racial justice, restorative justice, data transparency, and police accountability.

In partnership with the Vera Institute, Lucy and the IIP brought together advocates, scholars, crime survivors, formerly incarcerated community members, and district attorneys to begin a process of racial reckoning for American district attorneys, equipping them to begin dismantling mass incarceration and addressing racial injustice.

During her tenure at the IIP, Lucy drew on the influence of her grandfather and his committment to education in scaling Inside Criminal Justice (ICJ), a first-of-its-kind college-in-prison course she developed in 2017 at the Manhattan DA's office.

ICJ brings together Assistant District Attorneys and incarcerated students to study criminal justice side-by-side, with seminar sessions taking place inside New York State prisons. The class has since become a gold standard for legal education in district attorneys’ offices and is a new national model for changing the dynamic between district attorneys and the communities they serve.

In addition to her work on the policy and reform side of the criminal legal system, Lucy spent many formative years as an Assistant District Attorney in the in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. While there she handled domestic violence cases, murders, and gun violence.

One homicide case proved formative to Lucy's views about criminal legal reform. After the successful prosecution of two men for a 2015 mass shooting of five people that left a young father dead, Lucy asked the mother of the victim whether the verdict gave her a measure of peace. The mother responded that while she was glad justice was done, she could not stop thinking about the mothers of the convicted men. She said: "I am not the only mother who lost a son because of this crime."

In another major case, Lucy responded to a letter she received from a public housing complex tenant’s association. Tenants were living in fear of the violence and drug dealing that prevented their children from going outside and using the playgrounds. In response, Lucy oversaw a complicated murder and drug trafficking conspiracy case that helped to finally reclaim the neighborhood for families.

Recognizing that prosecution alone would not solve the challenges faced by local residents, she worked in collaboration with the local tenants' association, NYCHA, the NYC Parks Department, and the NYPD, in a first-ever coalition to replant the courtyards, refurbish the buildings, and develop a gardening program that enabled children and their families to safely regain use of their playground.

Lucy is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia Law School, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Gender and Law and has since served as a Lecturer-in-Law. She was born in Manhattan's Mount Sinai West (then Roosevelt) Hospital, the same hospital where her own two children were born. She now lives in Harlem with her partner Scott, their children, and a rotating cast of extended family. She is the author of March On! a children's book about the 1915 women's march.

Lucy has dedicated her career as a local and national leader in criminal justice to upholding racial and gender equity, promoting the dignity of, and prioritizing the safety of, everyone who touches the criminal legal system.