This year’s conference will feature eight speakers from diverse professional backgrounds, each of whom will impart a unique perspective on the issues that drive their work.
Click on each name below to learn more about our experts:
Thomas I. Vanaskie – United States Circuit Judge
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Court-Assisted Re-Entry: Redefining the Role of the Judiciary in Life After Prison.
The Honorable Judge Vanaskie will discuss his work with the Court Assisted Re-Entry program, in which he collaborates with other legal professionals to provide assistance and oversight to released prisoners in order to avoid recidivism. According to a recent study by the National Institute of Justice, over three-quarters of released prisoners are rearrested within five years. As such, the Attorney General has made re-entry a national priority. This program is just one of many being operated by federal courts throughout the nation to support ex-convicts in social re-integration, one of the greatest challenges in criminal justice reform.
Nicole Austin-Hillery – Director and Counsel
Brennan Center for Justice, Washington, D.C.
Is Community Integration After Incarceration in our Democracy a Reality or Just a Dream?
The United States is a nation that purports to believe in redemption. Our criminal justice system, at some point, was meant to not simply punish offenders but also to reform them. Yet, our criminal justice system offers little in the way of mechanisms that prepare individuals, once released, to truly re-engage with the community as fully, functioning citizens. There are numerous state laws that prevent the formerly incarcerated from taking part in our democracy by denying them the right to vote. Many jurisdictions refuse to implement laws that “ban the box,” making it possible for the formerly incarcerated to compete for gainful employment without being immediately eliminated from consideration simply because they have a criminal record. Our criminal justice system also continues to burden individuals with numerous fees and fines that make it extremely difficult for many to free themselves from the system and to become economically stable. All of these policies are in direct contradiction to the rhetoric that our nation is one that believes in second chances. Ms. Austin-Hillery will discuss the various policies that make it difficult to impossible for so many formerly incarcerated to move beyond their past criminal histories to a point of fully embracing their rights and obligations as productive citizens. Given that Ms. Austin-Hillery is a policy advocate, she will explore existing policies and current reform efforts to address these issues. This will include not only examining policies that exist on the state and federal level but she will also examine what federal reform, at the start of the 115th Congress, may be possible, such as the Brennan Center’s proposed Reverse Mass Incarceration Act, which is a model for how to undertake federal programmatic efforts to reduce and reverse mass incarceration, and encourage states to help reduce crime. Ms. Austin-Hillery will argue that not only must the nation implement policies that make post-incarceration a more open and fair period of opportunity for the formerly incarcerated but also that we must implement front-end reforms that reduce mass incarceration and the number of individuals who are entering our criminal justice system from the outset.
Justin Hansford – Professor of Law
Saint Louis University, School of Law
International Human Rights Law and Mass Incarceration
In the field of International Human Rights Law, under the Rome Statute, a “crime against humanity” would include any taking of life, or denial of fundamental human rights, or incarceration, “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Based on our current understandings of the origin, mechanics, and law surrounding mass incarceration, this presentation asks the question, does the United States Criminal Justice System constitute a crime against humanity? By engaging questions of intent, culpability, and other legal doctrinal questions, Professor Hansford seeks to interrogate the possibility of mass incarceration as a crime against humanity.
Andrew Hoover – Legislative Director
American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania
For Those Without the Capital: A Discussion on the State of Criminal Justice Reform in Pennsylvania.
The rhetoric around criminal justice is changing. Politicians say, “We can’t arrest our way out of this problem.” Governor Wolf implemented a moratorium on executions. And judicial candidates now run on “fairness” instead of “tough on crime.” But is policy really changing? Learn more about the reform effort with Andy Hoover of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.
E. Lea Johnston – Professor of Law
University of Florida, Levin College of Law
Criminalization, Criminality, and Criminal Justice Reform for Offenders with Mental Illnesses.
Approximately one third to one half of prison and jail inmates have mental illnesses. Prof. Johnston’s presentation will evaluate the widely accepted explanation for this phenomenon—the criminalization of mentally ill individuals following the closure of state psychiatric hospitals—and discuss the impact of this narrative on the structure of existing diversion programs. Her presentation will provide a critical examination of one diversion program, mental health courts, in light of evidence of actual drivers of offending by individuals with mental illness. She will conclude by suggesting reforms for the future.
Ashley Nellis – Senior Research Analyst
The Sentencing Project
Including Serious Crimes in Criminal Justice Reform: Life Sentences in Pennsylvania and the Nation.
Ashley Nellis will present on the upward creep of life and life-like prison sentences in the United States. With data collected by Nellis from all the states and the federal government, she will illustrate that lifers represent a sizable component of the US system of mass incarceration. Without sentencing reforms for those in the deep end of the justice system, significant improvements to US corrections will remain out of reach.
Susan Shah – Director of Programs and Strategy
Vera Institute of Justice
To Protect and Serve: Rethinking the Nation’s Approach to Law Enforcement.
More so than ever before, there is national recognition of the need for police reform to ensure that law enforcement is accountable and equipped to respond to community concerns. Concurrently, the impact of over policing on communities of color has made unintended yet extreme contributions to the historic levels of incarceration throughout the country. Further complicating these issues is the growing divide between police and community, and the high level of distrust in local law enforcement among communities of color, immigrant communities, youth and others. This presentation will highlight the key problems and questions facing policing reformers and the potential obstacles to reform in the future. Ms. Shah will discuss the need for redefining successful police performance and practices; opportunities to engage community members in the development of police policy around use of force and de-escalation; rethinking the role of police in responding to non-criminal behaviors; and the threat of law and order policing and counter-terrorism efforts ending community policing as we know it.
Donald Tibbs – Professor of Law
Drexel University, Thomas Kline School of Law
Towards an Abolition Democracy: Ending the Death Penalty and Mass Incarceration.
This presentation argues that a sustained historical examination of Black existence within U.S. legal regimes demonstrates the centrality of anti-blackness to the structures of punishment and captivity undergirding American democracy. First, Professor Tibbs argues that punishment, vis-à-vis the prison industrial complex, has a long history of legalized terror and violence against the Black body. Prisons, and the legally institutionalized power afforded them, have assisted in the trade in human suffering by criminalizing the Black body not because blackness posed a “real” threat to the safety of the nation-state, but rather because blackness disrupted the flow of a comfortable social milieu premised upon racial domination. Second, he claims that there is much to learn from the connections between the establishment, maintenance, and dissolution of American Black ghettos and the outgrowth of the Prison Industrial Complex. Both institutions belong to the same class of organizations, namely institutions of forced confinement: in that manner the ghetto functions as a ‘social prison’, while the prison functions as a ‘judicial ghetto.’ Both institutions are entrusted with enclosing a stigmatized population so as to neutralize the symbolic threat that raced people pose for the broader society. Both institutions have experienced capitalist gentrification. The ghettos were destroyed to construct new middle-class white housing, while black bodies were simultaneously relocated to construct new prisons. These similarities thus reveal that the Prison Industrial Complex, and its outgrowth of Mass Incarceration, form the fourth peculiar institution creating yet another Black existential crisis in the post-Civil Rights era.