Jill Soffiyah Elijah is an American lawyer, author and social justice activist.
Elijah holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University and a Juris Doctor degree from the Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan. [1] [2]
Following law school, she worked as a supervising attorney at the Neighborhood Defender Service in Harlem, New York, and in the juvenile rights division of the New York Legal Aide Society. [2] [3] Beginning in 1992, she taught in the defender clinic at CUNY School of Law. [2] She was a clinical faculty member and the director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University. [4]
Elijah was the first black director of the Correctional Association of New York, a position she held for five years. [5] At the Correctional Association, she worked with the Marshall Project to prosecute several guards Attica Prison for brutality against inmates. [6] [7] In 2016 she founded the Alliance of Families for Justice, an American organization that advocates for those with family members in prison. [8] [9] As a lawyer she has represented Marilyn Buck and Sundiata Acoli in court. [10]
In 2018 she was honored with the Spirit of John Brown Freedom Award. [11]
As an author she has written opinion pieces for the New York Daily News, [12] The Hill, [13] Democracy Now!, and the New York Times. [14] [15]