Imprisonment in the U.S. in the Era of "Black Lives Matter":
A Summer Event at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Thursday, August 13, 4 to 6:30 pm
2nd Floor Ericson Seminar Room, Canadian Gallery
14 Queen's Park Crescent West

Michelle Brown, from the University of Tennessee, editor of Crime, Media, and Culture, will give a talk on "the problem of life and death in American criminal justice", based on ethnographic and media analysis research on local and national community-based movements such as Black Lives Matter.  Her question is: "What does it mean to theorize mass incarceration through its counter-movements?"

Then, filmmaker and PhD candidate Brett Story will show an excerpt from her film-in-progress "The prison in twelve landscapes", described as "a non-fiction film about the prison from the places we least expect to find it: an anti-sex offender pocket park in LA, a congregation of ex-incarcerated chess players shut out of the formal labor market, the overnight buses that carry visitors to far-away prisons, and an Appalachian cola town betting its future on the promise of prison jobs."

Moderator: Phil Goodman

What the U.S. can Learn about Prison Reform Efforts Throughout the World
"It should come as no surprise that with the worst incarceration rate in the world, the United States has a massive problem on its hands.

With roughly 716 of every 100,000 U.S. residents behind bars, the U.S. locks up nearly one-quarter of the entire world’s prison population. Worse yet, when American inmates are released, they are extremely likely to return. The most recent recidivism data for state prisoners, reported by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, shows 68 percent are back behind bars within three years.

Efforts to reduce the American prison population that are already underway, including a push for drug-sentencing reform and some new investments in rehabilitation programs, have had some success. Last year, the federal prison population declined for the first time in over a decade.

Still, there’s still a long way to go -- and a lot American policymakers could learn from progress made in other parts of the world. Here are some unexpected places where prison reform efforts are having an impact...."