Trained as a criminologist with a specialization in forensic psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center/John Jay College, she performs mitigation investigations in death penalty cases and has testified as an expert witness in capital trials on future dangerousness and the etiology of violent crime. For many years she ran a successful reentry program on Rikers Island and currently consults with the CUNY Next Step violence reduction program on Rikers. As a former monitor of prison conditions, she has visited over 75 prisons in the United States, including supermax prisons, and has interviewed several hundred individuals held in solitary confinement.