Five years ago, during the height of the pandemic, Andrew Crespo and Premal Dharia launched the Institute to End Mass Incarceration and Inquest. The goal was to work with communities leading the fight to end mass incarceration across the country by finding ways to braid together the power of lawyers, organizers, storytellers, journalists, researchers and scholars. Since then, together, we have worked with partners nationwide to pursue essential and intertwined work on multiple fronts from media, to education, to advocacy.
After five remarkable years of growth and impact, with immense gratitude and appreciation, we are sharing the news that Premal, our inaugural and founding executive director, will be transitioning out of her roles at IEMI and at Inquest, where she is a founding editor and coeditor-in-chief. Andrew Crespo will continue to lead IEMI as its executive faculty director and Inquest as its editor-in-chief.
“Premal has been a wonderful partner in this extraordinary endeavor,” says Andrew. “Back when we launched IEMI and Inquest in 2021, I said that ‘I could not imagine a more thoughtful, more experienced, or better partner in this essential and exciting work,’ and I would say the same again now. I am so grateful for Premal’s political vision, strategic clarity, loyalty, and dedication. She will leave a legacy that spans a strong and growing organization, an award-winning magazine, and innovative interventions in the field that will have impact for years to come. We are filled with gratitude for all she has done.”
“Building and leading this organization, and its publication, has been the experience of a lifetime,” says Premal. “The early days were exhilarating, creative and full of raw energy and dedication. And that energy and dedication have only grown over the last five years. I am so deeply proud of the team we have built, the work we are doing, and the relentless optimism that infuses all of it. I am grateful to be leaving IEMI with the knowledge that the organization is healthy, strong, and well positioned to continue its important work.”
Premal has been a visionary leader, steering the organization from day one. She has been instrumental to building and guiding the Institute’s advocacy work, including its Carceral Infrastructure Project, through which Premal helped spearhead, among other things, a powerful connection between formerly incarcerated men in Washington, D.C., and local residents challenging a proposed new prison in eastern Kentucky, and the Exposing Prisons Project, which is working to make transparent what happens behind prison walls by expanding and protecting the right to report on it from inside and outside. Both projects are forging new paths for lawyers, journalists, and the movement as a whole. She has been an inspiring teacher in IEMI’s incredibly popular and successful clinic and seminar for Harvard law students, which has instilled in students a unique perspective and approach to lawyering: one that also seeks to understand the practice of community organizing so that lawyers can truly support organizer-led movements for social change. And she has been a clear-eyed leader in helping to launch and shape Inquest, which has grown to be a leading national forum for writing about mass incarceration featuring a broad range of incredible contributors: currently and formerly incarcerated writers, lawyers and organizers, scholars, doctors, social workers, and more. Inquest has reached over 500,000 readers, has been a finalist for the National Magazine Awards and a winner of multiple Stillwater Awards, and is a founding member of the national Movement Media Alliance.
Premal came to IEMI after nearly twenty years of challenging the harms of mass incarceration. Through her work as a public defender representing clients in state and federal courts and in Guantanamo Bay, as a supervisor who trained and guided other lawyers, as a civil rights lawyer pushing for change in the criminal legal system, as a Fellow at the Reflective Democracy Campaign, and as a nonprofit founder and leader, including of the Defender Impact Initiative, she has spent years working with leaders, advocates, organizers and those most directly impacted by the criminal system across the country. Through her writing and public speaking, she has sought to grow and strengthen efforts toward more justice for everyone.
At IEMI, Premal has only built on this legacy. She has done all one hopes for and more in an organization’s executive director: she has built a thriving body of work that will only continue to grow in its impact and inspiration atop the foundation she helped create. Premal will stay on at IEMI and Inquest through early fall to support the organization through this transition; her last day will be September 4, 2026. On behalf of all of us here at IEMI and Inquest, we extend to her our deepest gratitude and admiration.