Full Name
Ed Chung
Job Title
Vice President for Criminal Justice Reform
Company
Center for America Progress
Speaker Bio
Ed Chung is the vice president for Criminal Justice Reform at American Progress. His work focuses on reducing the footprint of the criminal justice system while making it fairer, more equitable, and more effective. Under the banner of Smart on Crime, Chung has developed a variety of policies and legislation around comprehensive public safety strategies, sentencing and prison reform, opportunities for those who are justice-involved, and ending the war on drugs. His work has been cited in The New Yorker, Slate, and HuffPost, among other national publications, and he often appears as a subject matter expert on media platforms such as NPR, Sirius XM, and the Progressive Voices Network. Chung also co-hosts Thinking CAP, a weekly news and political podcast by American Progress.
Prior to joining American Progress, Chung was a senior adviser and special counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he focused on criminal justice, policing, and civil rights issues at the Office of Justice Programs and the Civil Rights Division. In those capacities, he created a national initiative for building trust between the justice system and the communities it serves; coordinated the Obama administration’s violence reduction and second chance efforts under the My Brother’s Keeper initiative; led an interagency effort to reduce the use of military equipment by law enforcement; and worked to increase national collection of data related to criminal justice and policing. Chung also was a federal prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division and received the John Marshall Award for successfully prosecuting the first case under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
Since receiving his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, Chung’s experience has included serving as senior policy adviser at the White House Domestic Policy Council; counsel to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary; and assistant district attorney at the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. He holds a master’s in international affairs from the George Washington University Elliot School of International Affairs, and a bachelor’s in political science from Boston College.
Prior to joining American Progress, Chung was a senior adviser and special counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he focused on criminal justice, policing, and civil rights issues at the Office of Justice Programs and the Civil Rights Division. In those capacities, he created a national initiative for building trust between the justice system and the communities it serves; coordinated the Obama administration’s violence reduction and second chance efforts under the My Brother’s Keeper initiative; led an interagency effort to reduce the use of military equipment by law enforcement; and worked to increase national collection of data related to criminal justice and policing. Chung also was a federal prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division and received the John Marshall Award for successfully prosecuting the first case under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
Since receiving his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, Chung’s experience has included serving as senior policy adviser at the White House Domestic Policy Council; counsel to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary; and assistant district attorney at the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. He holds a master’s in international affairs from the George Washington University Elliot School of International Affairs, and a bachelor’s in political science from Boston College.
Speaking At
