Chauncee Smith

Chauncee serves as the Associate Director of Reimagine Justice & Safety at Catalyst California. He works in partnership with community-based organizations and government stakeholders to advance equity-driven public policies that improve California’s criminal legal system and make communities safer, especially for low-income people of color. 

He is a President of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s Task Force on Non-Law Enforcement Alternatives to Traffic Safety.  He previously served as a member of the Public Safety Advisory Committee of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 
Prior to joining Catalyst California, Chauncee was a legislative and racial justice advocate for the ACLU of California Center for Advocacy and Policy, where he lobbied to pass numerous public safety measures, including California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 (AB 953),  as well as AB 71 (2015) – which established statewide system for collecting and reporting data on law enforcement uses of force.  During that time, he has also served on the California Board of State and Community Correction’s Executive Steering Committee on Strengthening Police-Community Relations.

Chauncee clerked for Judge Theodore A. McKee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and served as a judicial extern to Judge Deborah A. Batts of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. 

Chauncee holds a B.A. in Political Science from UCLA and a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law.  He is the author of Deconstructing the Pipeline: Evaluating School-to-Prison Pipeline Equal Protection Cases through a Structural Racism Framework, and numerous equity- and justice-centered public policy reports.

He also teaches yoga and likes to climb rocks.