Vanita Gupta is the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Under the Obama administration, Gupta led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Keramet Reiter is an associate professor of criminology University of California Irvine. Reiter studies prisons, prisoner rights and the impact of prisons and policy.

Dawud Walid is the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Walid’s organization is providing video of sermons and prayer services for distribution in state prions.

Matthew Perry is an executive board member for Jewish Prisoner Services International. The organization’s mission is to help Jewish inmates, their families and those reentering society.

Karen Clifton is an executive committee member for Catholic Prison Ministries Coalition. She also is the executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network.

James J. Ackerman is the president and CEO of Prison Fellowship, a Christian ministry that serves the incarcerated, the recently released and their families. Contact Ackerman through Prison Fellowship’s website.

Karen Swanson is the director of Wheaton College’s Institute for Prison Ministries. For media requests, contact the college’s media relations office.

Stacy Rector is the executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. She also is an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier is a law professor at The City University of New York School of Law. He teaches about capital punishment and criminal law and wrote the book Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey and the American Death Penalty, which chronicles the history of the death penalty in the U.S.