News & Commentary written by Ashika Verriest

Ashika Verriest is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project. Her work focuses on bail reform and pre-trial justice, policing practices, and indigent defense reform. Ashika is a graduate of NYU School of Law and University of Michigan.

Ashika began her career at Brooklyn Defender Services, where she was a Special Litigation attorney working with public defenders to identify systemic constitutional issues in order to vindicate defendants’ constitutional rights within criminal cases. She then was a staff attorney for the Penn State Law Civil Rights Appellate Clinic and Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic where she worked on federal appellate briefs and immigration cases. Prior to joining the ACLU, she litigated prisoners’ rights and police reform cases at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.