Blake Strode, executive director of ArchCity Defenders, helped to establish the organization’s Civil Rights Litigation unit, which has brought challenges to a variety of unlawful and predatory practices including debtors’ prisons, police misconduct, and inhumane jail conditions, among others. In the past few years, Blake and his colleagues have filed more than 30 civil rights cases in state and federal court, impacting upwards of 40,000 people in the St. Louis region.