Jonathan Wroblewski is a lecturer at Harvard Law School and has been the Director of the Law School’s Semester in Washington Program since 2010.  He recently completed a 35-year federal criminal justice career, the last 16 years of which he served as Director of the Office of Policy and Legislation in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.  In that capacity, he led a team of policy analysts and attorneys in developing, reviewing, and evaluating national crime, sentencing, and corrections policy and legislation.  He also represented the Attorney General as a member, ex-officio, of the United States Sentencing Commission, on the Federal Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on the Criminal Rules, the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Council, and various other policy boards and panels.  In 2015-2017, Jonathan served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy, the Department-wide policy office, during which he spearheaded various criminal justice reform initiatives, including those addressing the use of forensic science in criminal justice, the deployment of drones and counter-drone technology by law enforcement, sentencing and corrections reform, eyewitness identification, and deaths while in criminal justice custody.

Jonathan began his career as an Assistant Public Defender in the Alameda County, California Public Defender’s office in 1986, immediately after graduating from Stanford Law School.  In that capacity, he represented hundreds of indigent criminal defendants at all stages of litigation.  In 1988, he moved to Washington, D.C. and served as a prosecutor in the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.  There, he prosecuted law enforcement misconduct, involuntary servitude, and hate crimes cases in federal courts across the country.  In 1994, Jonathan joined the staff of the United States Sentencing Commission staff as Deputy General Counsel and then later as Director of Legislative Affairs.  At the Sentencing Commission, he co-authored the first Commission report on federal cocaine sentencing policy, which would eventually lead to legislation reducing the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses signed by President Obama.

Jonathan’s academic work includes serving as a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology — as part of the Atlantic Fellowship in Public Policy — and as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University’s National Law Center and George Mason University School of Law.  Jonathan is a regular guest lecturer at various law schools and has published widely on criminal justice issues with a special focus on sentencing law and policy.  He is a Managing Editor of the Federal Sentencing Reporter and recently edited a double issue on artificial intelligence in the criminal justice system.  Jonathan has written dozens of essays for the Sentencing Matters Substack, which is affiliated with the Federal Sentencing Reporter, and manages its content.