Cristina Becker

Cristina Becker is an Associate Director researcher with the US Program at Human Rights Watch. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Cristina worked as an assistant federal public defender and an assistant state public defender providing direct representation for the indigent criminal justice-involved. She also spent five years with the American Civil Liberties Union. 

She worked initially with the ACLU of North Carolina as a staff attorney addressing the issues of debtors’ prisons in North Carolina, where she published At All Costs: The Consequences of Rising Court Fines and Fees in North Carolina. She then joined the national ACLU Capital Punishment Project and worked primarily as a capital mitigation specialist researching and writing the history of her clients and their families to combat their death sentences. 

Before law school, Cristina was a social worker with adjudicated children, and a foster care policy quality analyst serving child protective services offices nationwide.