Mustafa Ali-Smith, MPA

Social justice policy & advocacy
Brooklyn, NYc

Mustafa Ali-Smith (he/him) is a writer, social justice advocate, and organizer working at the intersection of community building, accountability, and transformative justice.

He is currently a Senior Program Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice, focused on community-centered public safety. In a prior role at Vera, he worked on the Reshaping Prosecution initiative, reducing incarceration and racial disparities by supporting community-based diversion programs and alternatives to incarceration. His other prior roles include a mayoral appointment in Knoxville's Office of Community Safety, where he helped build a violence-interruption strategy; policy work at Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia; and consulting with AHCCCS on Medicaid reentry reforms.

Alongside his policy work, Mustafa is the co-founder of Cue the Record and the founder of the Cue the Record Foundation, an organization that uses music and analog sound as a vehicle for community building, cultural education, and collective memory. Through intentional vinyl listening sessions and community programming across New York City, Cue the Record creates spaces where people slow down, listen deeply, and connect across lines of age, race, and background.

His writing on justice, race, culture, and history has appeared in The Appeal, Truthout, Black Youth Project and his Substack, Redesign America.

Headshot of Mustafa Ali-Smith (2026)

Contact | Instagram | X/ Twitter | LinkedIn

Resume
Full resume & CV available upon request

Education

Princeton University, School of Public & International Affairs, Domestic Policy, MPA

University of Pennsylvania, School of Arts & Sciences, Criminal Justice, Education & Race, MA

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business, Public Administration, BS

Professional Experience

Senior Program Asociate, Vera Institute of Justice, Redefining Public Safety Initiative
2026 —

Co-founder & Executive Director, Cue the Record
2024 —

Consultant, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS),
2024—2025

ACLU-NJ Clemency Initiative
2024—2025

Fellow, City of Philadelphia Managing Director’s Office, Policy & Strategic Initiatives
2024

Program Associate, Vera Institute of Justice, Reshaping Prosecution Initiative
2021—2023

Program Specialist, City of Knoxville Office of Community Safety (Mayoral Appointment)
2022—2023

Program Assistant, Juvenile Law Center
2021—2022

Skills

Policy analysis
Research design & evaluation
Descriptive analysis
Data manipulation & modeling
Regression techniques
R
Microsoft Excel

Personal Writing

Redesign America: How Much More Can One Bear: Notes on the American Dream (Jan 2025)

Redesign America: Claudette Colvin Paid the Price of the Ticket. We Must Not Forget That.(Jan 2025)

Redesign America: How the U.S. Defends Its Violence (Jan 2025)

Redesign America: The Price of Freedom (Jan 2025)

Redesign America: Student Loans and the Racial Politics of Punishment (Dec 2025)

Profile Write-Ups

Juvenile Law Center: Meet Leadership Prize Winner, Tom Grisso (Apr 2022)

Juvenile Law Center: Meet Leadership Prize Winner, Dorothy Roberts (Apr 2022)

Juvenile Law Center: Meet Leadership Prize Winner, Cyntoia Brown Long (Mar 2022)

Media Mentions

New York Times: This Vinyl-Listening Club in Brooklyn Slows Down for the Whole Album by Alexandra E. Petri (Apr 2026)

CNBC: This NYC-b ased duo created a ‘third space’ for music lovers to bond over vinyl records by Renée Onque (Oct 2025)

NJ Spotlight News: Diversion Not Incarceration By Bobby Brier (Dec 2022)

Last Updated 05.05.26

Selected Work
Publications, articles, & projects

Lessons from Building Equitable Prosecutor-Initiated Diversion Programs with Community Partners

Vera Institute of Justice, May 2025

Co-authored with Meghan Nayak, Maresi Starzman, and Andrew Taylor

This report documents the Vera Institute's Motion for Justice initiative, a multi-year collaboration between nine district attorney's offices and ten community-based organizations across eight states to build and expand community-centered diversion programs. Co-authored as part of Vera's Reshaping Prosecution initiative, the report presents findings and recommendations from partnerships focused on reducing racial disparities in prosecution and creating equitable alternatives to incarceration.

The report argues that diversion programs — when designed with community input, freed from charge-based eligibility restrictions, and grounded in a racial equity lens — offer a more effective and humane path to public safety than traditional prosecution. Drawing on data analysis across jurisdictions, the report documents stark racial disparities in prosecution rates and demonstrates how community-led diversion can begin to address them. It also offers practical guidance for prosecutors and CBOs on building sustainable programs, from appointing dedicated diversion coordinators to developing meaningful evaluation frameworks that go beyond recidivism.

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Two Roads to Reform: Marijuana Policy Changes, Arrest Trends, and Racial Disparities in Chicago and Indianapolis

Princeton University Journal of Public & International Affair, April 2025

Co-authored with Keiana West

This research paper examines the relationship between marijuana policy reform, arrest trends, and racial disparities in two major U.S. cities — Chicago, which implemented statewide legalization in January 2020, and Indianapolis, which decriminalized certain marijuana offenses at the county level in September 2019. Analyzing public arrest data from 2014 to 2023, the paper explores whether arrests declined following each policy change, how racial disparities shifted in response, and how marijuana arrest trends compare to those for other drugs.

The findings show significant reductions in marijuana-related arrests in both cities after reform, though the degree of change varied. Racial disparities decreased in both Chicago and Indianapolis in the immediate aftermath of each policy change — but in both cities, those disparities increased again as time passed. The paper ultimately argues that policy reform alone is insufficient, and that sustained, equity-centered practices are necessary to maintain meaningful reductions in racial disparities over time.

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The Death Penalty Is Always an Atrocity, Not Just for the Wrongfully Convicted

Truthout, September 2024

When the state of Missouri executed Khaliifah ibn Rayford Daniels — formerly known as Marcellus Williams — despite significant doubt about his guilt, it provoked widespread outrage. But this essay argues that the outrage cannot stop there. Centering an abolition case on innocence implicitly accepts that the state has the right to execute the guilty, a premise that deserves far more scrutiny than it receives.

Tracing the death penalty's roots in racial terror, lynching, and the post-Civil War criminalization of Black life, the piece situates capital punishment not as an aberration of the justice system but as an expression of it. It challenges readers to reckon with what justice actually demands — not retribution and death, but accountability, healing, and restoration. As long as the moral threshold for opposing execution is innocence rather than humanity, the death penalty will endure. True abolition requires a deeper commitment: that no life is disposable, regardless of what a person has done.

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Returning Home: Recommendations to the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System on the Implementation of its 1115 Reentry Waiver

Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, January 2025

Co-authored with Md Rahmat Ali, Laurel Cooke, Claire Fondrie-Teitler, Christopher Gliwa, Benjamin Harris, Julian Lutz, Tina Lee, Rachel Morrow, Daisha Roberts, Svyatoslav Karnasevych, and Keiana West

This policy report, produced for Arizona's Medicaid agency (AHCCCS), provides recommendations for implementing a Section 1115 Reentry Waiver that would expand healthcare coverage to people transitioning from incarceration. Drawing on field research, stakeholder interviews — including conversations with incarcerated women at Perryville Prison — and analysis of comparable programs in other states, the report lays out a comprehensive framework for improving continuity of care during the critical reentry window.

The report recommends AHCCCS pursue the full 90-day pre-release service period allowed under federal guidance, covering mandatory services like case management, medication-assisted treatment, and prescription drug access, alongside additional clinical services and supports addressing housing, transportation, food security, and behavioral health. It also offers implementation guidance on workforce development, rural and tribal healthcare access, health plan enrollment flexibility, and program evaluation — with the goal of positioning Arizona as a national leader in reentry healthcare.

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Diversion Programs, Explained

Vera Institute of Justice, April 2022

Co-authored with Akhi Johnson

This explainer breaks down what diversion programs are, how they work, and why they offer a more effective path to public safety than incarceration. It traces the spectrum of diversion — from pre-police encounter programs that eliminate law enforcement response to certain 911 calls, to pre-arrest, pre-charge, and pretrial alternatives — and makes the case that addressing the root causes of criminalized behavior, rather than punishing them, produces better outcomes for individuals and communities alike.

Grounded in research, the piece highlights the stark costs of incarceration — financial, human, and communal — and points to evidence showing that diversion meaningfully reduces future convictions and improves employment outcomes. It profiles real programs across the country, from restorative justice initiatives for youth in California to mental health diversion centers in Texas, illustrating what a safety-centered, community-rooted approach can look like in practice.

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Weaving Life and Law to Transform Justice

Juvenile Law Center, June 2025

Co-authored with Jessica Feierman, Jeannette Bocanegra, Hernan Carvente, Anahi Figueroa, Johnny Perez, Amir Whitaker, Aqilah David, and Jihid May.

This report — produced out of a convening hosted by Juvenile Law Center — brings together lawyers, organizers, and leaders with lived experience in the juvenile and criminal legal systems to chart a path toward transformative youth justice. It argues that legal advocacy alone is insufficient and that meaningful change requires centering the voices and visions of those who have survived the system.

Mustafa co-authored Section II, "The Myth of Juvenile Justice," which traces the history of the juvenile legal system through the lens of race, slavery, and ongoing racial subjugation — challenging the sanitized narrative that often frames the system as a well-intentioned but imperfect project of reform. The section argues that without a clear-eyed reckoning with this history, reform efforts will continue to miss the mark. The report goes on to articulate a shared vision of justice grounded in dignity, restoration, and community — and outlines concrete litigation strategies to support divestment from the current system and investment in youth and families.

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