Andrea Armstrong
Professor of Law, Loyola University New Orleans
GOSO is proud to present the 2024 Pinnacle Award to Professor Andrea Armstrong for her unwavering commitment to bringing much-needed transparency to incarceration practices in the United States.
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 is a distinguished incarceration law scholar. She shines light on the poor living conditions in prisons and jails, and in particular the deaths of individuals in custody. Her research, legal writings, and advocacy are rooted in incarcerated people’s experiences in Louisiana, but the influence of her work is much broader.
Professor Armstrong founded IncarcerationTransparency.org, a database and website 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.
Professor Armstrong is a graduate of Yale Law School (JD), the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (MPA), and New York University (BA).
Learn more about this year’s gala, and find sponsorship and ticket information, here.