Abbie Starker

Abbie will join the Center for Restorative Justice at Suffolk University, where she and community members will utilize restorative justice practices to address community safety, build community power, and co-create healing alternatives to the criminal legal system.Committed to racial justice, prison-industrial complex abolition, and building liberatory futures in community, she will collaborate with Bostonians who have been most impacted by the violence of the criminal legal system to imagine and create community-led structures for resolving conflict, healing harm, supporting returning community members, and addressing structural justice issues. In law school, Abbie was a student attorney and team leader with Harvard Defenders, and a student attorney and Family Practice Co-director at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. She was a Criminal Defense Practice intern at The Bronx Defenders and a legal intern at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Prior to law school, Abbie worked at domestic violence agencies in Philadelphia and Baltimore, where she saw the deep need for healing alternatives to the legal system to address violence in relationships and communities. She earned her B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Political Science, and Africana Studies.

Fellowship type: Justice Catalyst

Organization: Center of Restorative Justice at Suffolk University

Project name: Community-Led Restorative Justice Structures: Disrupting the Prison-Industrial Complex and Shifting the Power of Justice Back to the Community