Michael Harris
National Center for Youth Law
Michael Harris is Senior Director, Juvenile Justice at the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL). At NCYL, Michael has worked on reducing racial disparities in statewide juvenile corrections systems, and he has worked on cases that challenge the “school-to-prison pipeline” in Texas, Connecticut, and California. Additionally, he works on litigation to address implicit bias, and he has delivered presentations to local and national gatherings on the role implicit bias plays in decision-making within the school to prison pipeline and the juvenile justice system. Before joining NCYL, Michael served as Deputy Director of the W. Haywood Burns Institute, working to reform juvenile justice systems. Michael has worked in California, and Washington to reduce racial disparities in the juvenile justice system using a collaborative process to affect systemic reform. Prior to Michael’s work at the Burns Institute, he was a Staff Attorney and Assistant Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area where he worked on a broad range of civil rights cases.