Andrea Armstrong
2023 MacArthur Fellow & s Distinguished Professor at Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law
Andrea Armstrong
2023 MacArthur Fellow & s Distinguished Professor at Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law
Biography
Andrea Armstrong is the Dr. Norman C. Francis Distinguished Professor of Law at Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law and a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Professor Armstrong joined the Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law faculty in 2010. She is a leading national expert on prison and jail conditions and is certified by the U.S. Department of Justice as a Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor. Prof. Armstrong founded IncarcerationTransparency.org, a database/website designed by Prof. Judson Mitchell, that provides facility-level deaths behind bars data and analysis for Louisiana and memorializes lives lost behind bars. Her research has been profiled by New Yorker Magazine and quoted in the New York Times, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, and the Times-Picayune among others. Her scholarship focuses on the constitutional dimensions of prisons and jails, specifically prison labor practices, the intersection of race and conditions of incarceration, and public oversight of detention facilities. She teaches in the related fields of incarceration law and policy, constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, law and poverty, and race and the law.
Prof. Armstrong is an interdisciplinary scholar, integrating incarceration law with history, health policy, and the arts. She is the lead investigator for the Deaths Behind Bars in Louisiana project, supported by Arnold Ventures and in partnership with the Promise of Justice Initiative and Voice of the Experienced. In 2019, she received a three-year Interdisciplinary Research Leader grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, shared with the Voice of the Experienced and LSU Center for Healthcare Value and Equity, to examine the effects of incarceration on health service use in Louisiana, currently a global and national leader in incarceration rates. Prof. Armstrong has also served as an appointed member of the Louisiana Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and on several Louisiana legislative study committees on issues related to incarceration practices. She has also worked with museums, local artists, and philanthropic foundations to translate incarceration law and policy into spaces and mediums that are accessible to the general public.
Professor Armstrong is a graduate of Yale Law School (JD), the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (MPA), and New York University (BA). After graduating from law school, Professor Armstrong served as a clerk for the Honorable Helen G. Berrigan of the United States Eastern District of Louisiana. She also litigated prisoners’ rights issues, among others, as a Thomas Emerson fellow with David Rosen and Associates in New Haven, CT. She is admitted to practice in Connecticut (retired), New York (retired) and Louisiana state courts, as well as the U.S. District Court of Connecticut (retired), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (retired) and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Speaker Videos
Incarceration Symposium - Carceral Secrecy
Speech Topics
Inside Detention Centers, Jails & Prisons
In this riveting talk, Andrea Armstrong shines a light on conditions of confinement in America’s jails and prisons. What happens behind bars is often kept secret from the general public. With both pictures and videos, she expands our understanding of the true nature of punishment and challenges us to confront what we do to one another behind closed and locked gates. Despite these conditions, people behind bars find ways to advocate for their civil rights and reaffirm their humanity. Audiences leave with a deeper understanding of the nature of incarceration, equipped with strategies to make the invisible visible.
The Future of Criminal Justice Reform
We have held ourselves captive to mass incarceration for over 50 years, crippling our present and undermining our future. Criminal justice reform efforts have focused on the entry and exit points to incarceration, without accounting for what happens when a person is behind bars. In this compelling talk, Andrea Armstrong looks to both the past and our potential futures. She argues that prison and jail conditions are an essential part of the conversation on ending mass incarceration in America because it focuses our attention on the purposes of incarceration and the humanity of people behind bars. Ultimately, Andrea Armstrong challenges audiences to choose a new path that recognizes the inherent dignity of all people.
Race & the Law
Andrea Armstrong explores the dynamic intersection between race and the law in America in this historically grounded talk. Her analysis highlights the implicit and explicit use of race in legal jurisprudence, including racially determined access to rights and benefits as well as judicial compromises that culminated in the end of affirmative action in college admissions. Audiences will gain new understanding of historic and contemporary approaches to race within the law as well as the role of courts in shaping our conversations about race today.
We Do This Together: Coalition Building & Democracy Protection
In this eye-opening talk, Andrea Armstrong discusses tools to protect and strengthen an inclusive democracy. All too often, individual voting is treated as the ultimate form of democratic participation, but this ignores a range of actions and advocacy supporting transparency and accountability of governments at the local, state, and national levels. Andrea Armstrong explores what it takes to build coalitions that draw on a range of experiences and skills, empowering audiences to build the world they want to live in.
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