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Mission

The Center for Law, Brain & Behavior puts the most accurate and actionable neuroscience in the hands of judges, lawyers, policymakers and journalists—people who shape the standards and practices of our legal system and affect its impact on people’s lives. We work to make the legal system more effective and more just for all those affected by the law.

“Dr. Alisha Moreland-Capuia (Dr. AMC) graduated from Stanford University and an M.D. from George Washington University. After medical school, Dr. AMC completed four years of training in psychiatry and a fellowship in addiction medicine, both at Oregon Health & Science University. She is an expert in trauma-informed systems change, and specifically has interacted with numerous and varied aspects of the criminal justice system. She has served on the Portland Community Oversight Advisory Board, charged with monitoring the implementation of the City of Portland’s settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to enact reform to Portland Police Bureau (PPB) policies and training. She has partnered with the Federal Judicial Center and the National Judicial College to provide training for Federal Judges and Probation Officers and State Supreme Court Judges, respectively.

Dr. AMC has trained U.S. Senators and staffers in applying a trauma-informed lens to policies and legislation. She is training various U.S. Probation and Pretrial Service District Offices to facilitate trauma-informed change in U.S. presentencing and sentencing guidelines and post-prison supervision. While in residency training, Dr. AMC built Healing Hurt People-Portland (HHP), a trauma-informed, hospital-based, community-focused youth violence prevention program.

Dr. AMC’s trauma-informed efforts are global as she works in Angola, Africa at their family clinic Centro Medico Bom Samaritano and is the co-founder of The Capuia Foundation.

She is the founder and director of McLean Hospital’s Institute for Trauma-Informed Systems Change, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and sole author of Training for Change: Transforming Systems to be Trauma-Informed, Culturally Responsive, and Neuroscientifically Focused (2019) and The Trauma of Racism: Exploring the People and Systems Fear Built  (2021).

She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and children.”

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