Policy reports

Ziyad Hopkins has worked with the Massachusetts public defender’s office—the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS)-- since 1998. After representing adults in Suffolk Superior Court for almost five years, he joined the agency’s Youth Advocacy Division-Roxbury office in 2003 as a trial attorney, representing young people facing criminal accusations. He has also served as the manager of a United States Bureau of Justice Assistance capacity building and strategic planning grant to CPCS to improve the use of data to ensure quality representation. He teaches “Juvenile Law and the Courts” at Wheelock College in the Juvenile Justice and Youth Advocacy Department . He graduated from Northeastern University School of Law (JD) and from Oberlin College (BA). During college, he worked with the Mandela Institute, based in Ramallah, Palestine, documenting the detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners and before attending law school worked as an investigator for the Public Defender Service of Washington, DC. During his Ian Axford Fellowship, he was hosted by the Ministry of Social Development (Youth Policy Team) and the Ministry of Justice.  He explored the role of the Youth Advocate in New Zealand’s youth justice sector.  His report is titled “Diversion from Counsel:  Filling the Rights Gap in New Zealand’s Youth Justice Model.”