Robinson

Daphne Robinson is an experienced attorney and former prosecutor from Louisiana, with over 20 years of legal experience. She is currently a public health law consultant, who continues to learn and develop in the public health field through formal education, research, writing, and promoting community-based alternatives to prosecution and incarceration.

While serving as a prosecutor for almost twenty years, Daphne prosecuted hundreds of criminal cases. Over the years, she began to notice a disturbing common denominator. Many of the offenders that entered her courtroom suffered from substance abuse and mental health issues, and because of this often entered the revolving door of the criminal justice system and could not easily exit.

After years of observation, Daphne concluded that the criminal justice system is ill-equipped to deal with issues facing many of the offenders in criminal court. Quite frankly, she decided that incarcerating these offenders often did more harm than good. It was then that she decided that preventing crime was a public health issue and began devoting her life to studying and creating evidence-based programs and strategies to achieve this end. Many of her early contributions to research on effective alternatives to prosecution and incarceration can be found at: http://modelsforchange.com.

After working with the MacArthur Foundation through Models for Change helping to divert youthful offenders out the system, she returned to graduate school to pursue a Masters Degree in Public Health (MPH) from Emory University Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her MPH degree in in May of 2016 and currently works as a consultant with specialties in public health law and policy.