Advisory Board of the Center for Juvenile Law and Policy
Elizabeth Calvin is a Senior Advocate in the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. She is an attorney with experience in juvenile justice, foster care, and education rights. At Human Rights Watch she focuses on the rights of children, with a specific emphasis on children and youth in foster care and the criminal justice system. Her work includes research and writing on human rights violations against children, policy and legal advocacy, and partnership building with community groups. She is an author of three Human Rights Watch reports on juveniles serving life without parole, and works closely with a national campaign to end the use of extreme prison sentences for youth. In 2012, her leadership of a coalition-based effort resulted in the reform of California’s use of life without parole sentences for youth. She has also written on foster care and homelessness, and works closely with youth, faith groups, family members of youth sentenced to life in prison, crime victims, incarcerated individuals, advocates, and activists for youth rights.
She is on the board of the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center; an Advisory Board member for TeamChild in Washington; a member of the Equity Project Advisory Committee; and she served recently on the MacArthur Foundation’s Juvenile Indigent Defender Action Network California team. In 2012, she received the Sister Janet Harris Juvenile Advocate Award.