David Fathi is a lawyer and Director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, which brings challenges to conditions of confinement in prisons, jails, and other places of detention. He has litigated numerous prisoner rights cases throughout the United States, including challenges to inadequate health care in the Arizona state prison system, the Baltimore City Jail, and many other carceral facilities. From 2012 to 2015 he represented the ACLU in negotiations leading to adoption of the United Nations Revised Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the “Nelson Mandela Rules.”
From 2007 to 2010 Fathi was Director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch. The US Program works to defend the rights of particularly vulnerable groups in the United States, and has published groundbreaking reports on the death penalty, prison conditions, racial discrimination, the rights of immigrants, and many other human rights issues.
Fathi has lectured nationally and internationally on criminal justice issues. His op-eds have appeared in The Guardian, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, and other major media outlets. He is Chair of the Board of Penal Reform International, a Netherlands-based NGO that works for criminal justice reform around the world.
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