IEMI Executive Director Premal Dharia receives award from American Bar Association

Via American Bar Association

Premal Dharia is the recipient of the 2024 Albert J. Krieger Champion of Liberty Award.

Premal Dharia is the executive director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration at Harvard Law School and coeditor in chief of the online publication Inquest. Previously, she spent nearly 15 years representing people charged with criminal offenses in three different places: the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Baltimore, Maryland, and the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In 2014, she was selected for a three-month fellowship to help build out and train three new public defender offices in the West Bank. She brought these years of experience to Civil Rights Corps, where she was the Director of Litigation. In 2019, she received a fellowship through the Reflective Democracy Campaign, which investigates the demographics of, and works to dismantle structural barriers around, political power. During that time, she started the Defender Impact Initiative, which focused on the role public defenders can play in the broad movement to end mass incarceration. The work and ideas of DII have been incorporated into the Institute to End Mass Incarceration.

“The Krieger Champion of Liberty Award is an incredible honor that reflects the depth of Premal’s commitment to advancing true justice for all of the people ensnared in the criminal legal system – and to making our country a place where all people can flourish. We are so thrilled that Premal has received this honor, and look forward to sharing a report from the March awards ceremony!” says the Institute to End Mass Incarceration.

About the Krieger Champion of Liberty Award

This award was established to recognize defense attorneys who embody the principles enunciated in the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice, Defense Function. 

This award was established to recognize defense attorneys who embody the principles enunciated in the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice, Defense Function. 

This award is in honor of the late Albert J. Krieger, who was the Section’s Chair from 2002 to 2003.  Krieger was the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers from 1979 to 1980 and helped establish the National Criminal Defense College at Mercer University in 1985.  He also represented the NACDL in the ABA House of Delegates for many years and was considered one of the ABA’s most respected voices on criminal justice issues.  

His clients ranged from corporate executives to notorious Mafia leaders,  but as documented in the New York Times on May 28, 2020, “he was proudest of having worked without a fee on behalf of the American Indian Movement members who occupied Wounded Knee, S.D., in 1973.”