California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the appointment of an Inglewood law professor to a state commission on Oct. 11.
Priscilla Ocen, of Inglewood, has been appointed to the Committee on the Revision of the Penal Code. Ocen has been a Professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles since 2012. She served as Special Assistant Attorney General at the California Department of Justice from 2022 to 2023. Ocen was a Critical Race Studies Teaching Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law from 2010 to 2012. She was a Thurgood Marshall Fellow at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area from 2007 to 2009. Ocen served as a Law Clerk for the Honorable Eric L. Clay of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 2007 to 2008 and was a Jesse M. Unruh Assembly Fellow from 2003 to 2004. She earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Africana Studies from San Diego State University. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Ocen is a Democrat.
The committee was created on January 1, 2020, and is charged with studying the California Penal Code to recommend statutory reforms to simplify and rationalize the substance of criminal law and criminal procedures, establish alternatives to incarceration that will aid in rehabilitation, and improve the system of parole and probation.
To learn more about the Committee on the Revision of the Penal Code click here.
