Jasmine Tyler, Deputy Director, National Affairs

As deputy director of national affairs, Jasmine L. Tyler works as a federal lobbyist on diminishing the harms associated with drug use and the drug war. She has worked directly on increasing access to substance abuse treatment, eliminating both the Washington, DC, and federal bans on syringe exchange funding, equalizing the penalties for crack and powder cocaine, eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing, and repealing laws that amount to collateral sanctions for felony drug convictions such as the loss of voting rights, food stamps, TANF, student loans and other kinds of public assistance. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and The Economist.

Before joining the organization, Jasmine worked as research director for the Justice Policy Institute, where she co-authored several reports, including “Higher Education Programs in Prisons: Promoting Public Safety and Building Social Capital,” and “Cost-Effective Corrections: The Fiscal Architecture of Rational Juvenile Justice Systems,” and contributed to “The Consequences Aren’t Minor: The Impact of Trying Youth as Adults and Strategies for Reform.” Prior to working for JPI, Jasmine was a sentencing advocate and mitigation specialist at the D.C. Public Defender Service and the Fairfax Public Defender Office. She received a B.S. in sociology from James Madison University and an M.A. in sociology from Brown University, where her master's thesis was entitled "Hard Knock Life: Racial Alienation and Rap Music.”