Impact 100 2024 Finalist Jumpstarts Services with $10,000 Extend Your Impact Award
“Thoughtful Approaches, Intentional Focus” Guide Gabe Davis at Ohio Justice & Policy Center
Given his educational background, professional experiences, legal credentials and a deeply held, family-influenced passion for doing what’s right, Cincinnati native Gabe Davis could be practicing law pretty much anywhere in the U.S.
For the first 18 of years of his career, in fact, he worked at prestigious agencies and law firms, including as a federal prosecutor in the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice, an assistant district attorney for the New York County District Attorney’s Office, a senior associate at Cincinnati-based Frost Brown Todd law firm, and executive director of the City of Cincinnati’s Citizen Complaint Authority.
But in a career path that Davis credits to his legal and family experiences, he now works from a law office on East Ninth Street in downtown Cincinnati as chief executive officer of The Ohio Justice and Policy Center (OJPC), inspired by the agency’s simple-but-powerful mission statement: “To create fair, intelligent, redemptive criminal justice systems.”
Davis and his 17-member staff, including seven attorneys, represent individuals who have been wrongly or excessively incarcerated. They ensure that imprisoned people are treated properly and fairly. Once freed after serving their sentences, OJPC helps clients regain access to basic human rights and services — job opportunities, housing, parental rights, expunged criminal records, medical care and more.
Recognizing the unique obstacles faced by women caught up in the justice system, OJPC has a growing focus on advocacy for criminalized women.
Impact 100 Funding, Exposure Make a Difference
OJPC was a 2024 Impact 100 finalist, and although it was not one of the four eventual $100,000 grant recipients, it did receive an additional $10,000 grant that enabled the agency to jumpstart outreach and services, including to Ohio’s women’s prison in Marysville and other correctional facilities. The extra services will provide legal support to incarcerated people, support educational workshops about prisoners’ rights, and formalize coordination with attorneys in Columbus, Cleveland and other Ohio cities to spread OJPC’s impact.
“The Impact 100 grant certainly helped us map out a strategy that involves greater outreach to women’s prisons and to prison wardens as well,” Davis points out. “It’s satisfying to know that by our knowing the system, for example, some women can now navigate the parole process without an attorney.”
Publicity about OJPC’s Impact 100 award also triggered additional substantial donations that continue to support its growth and impact.
“The $10,000 grant was a nice shot in the arm, and being part of the Impact 100 process gave us exposure and served as a bolt of confidence to help us raise additional funds,” he notes.
Each Success Is an Inspiration
Davis is buoyed and inspired by data from OJPC’s 2023 annual report: 377 registrants for a second-chance legal clinic, 290 clients who received help having their criminal records sealed, 37 clients whose felony sex-trafficking charges were expunged though OJPC’s Safe Harbor program, 30 clients represented at parole board hearings by its Beyond Guilt team, 13 clients recommended for pardons by the parole board, 10 clients released from prison, six granted pardons by the governor, and more.
Each day, he and his staff remain inspired by the successes of women who have benefited from the OJPC staff’s expertise: Michelle, who was released from prison after serving 30 years of a wrongful sentence for murder and was able to be present at the birth of her grandchild, and Barb, whose 60 convictions were erased because of the abuse she endured as a victim of sex trafficking.
“We’re not going to get a handle on the problem of incarceration if we don’t specifically acknowledge the over-incarceration of women, how they’re more harshly prosecuted for drug offenses than men, and how they’re disproportionately treated and disciplined in prison for the same infractions as men,” Davis says.
Family Influences, Legal Experience
Davis traces his career path to family and community experiences rooted in his childhood in Kennedy Heights and other neighborhoods.
“Certainly my decision to become an attorney was influenced by my family’s commitment to civil rights,” says Davis, 40, married father of two young daughters. Davis says he grew up being influenced by the civil rights movement at a young age.
“I remember hearing personal stories of my grandparents, some of whom were sharecroppers from Alabama, being harassed by the KKK when they were children.”
His father was a Cincinnati police officer, another factor that shaped his thinking about the intersection of law, policing, justice, incarceration and redemption. A graduate of The Seven Hills School, Davis studied political science at Yale University, earned a law degree from Harvard University, and then headed to D.C. and New York.
“Ultimately, to be able to work on national issues involving civil rights, and to be a prosecutor holding people accountable for committing hate crimes or abuses of power…it was very gratifying work,” he says. “It was because of those experiences that I realized how criminal law and the system of policing and punishment impact so many other aspects of women’s lives…education, jobs, family, social services and the way in which criminal justice unfolds and is enforced.”
Restoring Lives and Dignity
Those same experiences also exposed him to the multiple factors that contribute to women’s encounters with the justice system, including sex trafficking, abuse, poverty, addiction, lack of access to legal resources and more.
“You learn all the ways in which incarcerated women’s tragic stories of abuse — whether as wives, girlfriends, young children, victims of sex trafficking, even the treatment and punishment they endure in prison – never factor in decisions made about them by the criminal justice system,” he says. Key statistics stand out: 70% of incarcerated women report histories of some sort of intimate partner abuse, and nearly two-thirds report histories of mental health issues.
“It’s a big challenge, and it requires thoughtful approaches and intentional focus, which is what we’re doing at OJPC. We’re grateful that Impact 100 saw what we’re doing…and there’s a lot more coming from us in the future.”