Tracey L. Meares: Effective Policing

Tracey L. Meares discusses her article, “The Good Cop: Knowing the Difference Between Lawful or Effective Policing and Rightful Policing — And Why it Matters.” Prof. Meares describes the two traditional roles of policing as they function under the law and in fighting crime. These two roles place the responsibility of policing on the behavior of citizens. But Prof. Meares suggests a third role, rightful policing, that places the emphasis on procedure, fairness, and transparency of conduct of the…

Jonathan Witmer-Rich: Cuyahoga County Bail Reform

Jonathan Witmer-Rich discusses his work on the ”Cuyahoga County Bail Task Force: Report and Recommendations.” Professor Witmer-Rich explains the bail situation in Cuyahoga County. Looking at cash bail as a means to secure future appearances and reduce risk, courts are actually preemptively incarcerating and punishing citizens who are presumed innocent. We talk about how the Ohio Supreme Court and Ohio voters responded to recommendations for felony bail reform. Jonathan Witmer-Rich is the…

Ekow Yankah: Deputization and White Violence

Ekow Yankah discusses his forthcoming Stanford Law Review article, "Deputization and Privileged White Violence." Prof. Yankah unpacks how the development of social and physical control of slaves necessitated laws and norms that allowed any white person the ability to police a person of color. This white privilege continues today in the self-deputization and citizen 's arrest interactions. Thinking themselves as enforcers of the law, white citizens elevate themselves to, sometimes,…

Gian Maria Campedelli: Black Homicide Victims

Gian Maria Campedelli, research scientist at Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Italy, discusses his research article, “Homicides Involving Black Victims are less likely to be Cleared in the United States.” Drawing upon three databases the FBI’s national incident-based reporting system (NIBRS) and the Murder Accountability Project (MAP), Campedelli found that homicides with Black victims were between 3.4% and 4.8% less likely to be solved by police. Gian Maria Campedelli, a research scientist in…

Justin Brooks: Why You Might End Up In Prison

Professor Justin Brooks, director of the LLM Program in U.S. Law in Spanish at the University of San Diego, discusses his book, You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent. Prof. Brooks explains how bad lawyering, bad science, and inadequate investigations, lead to wrongful conviction. We look into how police interrogations and juries all contribute to a broken justice system, where innocence is no protection from incarceration. Professor Brooks directs the LLM Program in U.S. Law…

Jaquelyn Jahn: Police Violence and Pregnant People

Jaquelyn Jahn, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Drexel University, discusses her articles "Neighborhood Proactive Policing and Racial Inequities in Preterm Birth in New Orleans, 2018‒2019" and "Gestational Exposure to Fatal Police Violence and Pregnancy Loss in U.S. Core Based Statistical Areas, 2013-2015." Professor Jahn discusses how police violence and over-policing disproportionately affects Black, Native American, and Hispanic people, and increases the risk of…

Vida Johnson: Judges and White Supremacy

Vida Johnson, professor at law at Georgetown law, discusses her article “White Supremacy and the Bench.” In which she describes how judges maintain and enforce structural racism. Judges benefit from a cultural cache of authority, prestige and as unbiased arbiters of fairness, but they often sustain and amplify racism through jokes, decisions, and rulings that unfairly targets people of color.

Jocelyn Simonson: Radical Acts of Justice

Professor Jocelyn Simonson talks about her book, Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration. Beginning with a close look at the ideological meaning behind calling the prosecution, “The People,” Prof. Simonson points out how the criminal justice systems defines “community.” By looking at several ways activists and volunteers engage in organized efforts centered around bail, court watching, and participatory defense, Prof. Simonson shows how justice is changing…

Robin Bernstein: Auburn Prison and the Murder that Shocked America

Professor Robin Bernstein discusses her book, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison For Profit. Auburn Prison in Upstate New York was designed to be a factory prison, incorporating the area’s major industry into its walls. Through harsh conditions, solitary and silent confinement, and constant violence, the inmates’ lives were desolate ones of hard labor. Enter William Freeman who was convicted of a horse theft he insisted he did not commit. He suffered greatly in…

Erica Meiners: Childhood and Carceral Society

Erica R. Meiners is a Professor of Education and Women’s and Gender Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. Professor Erica Meiners discusses her book, For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State, in which the definition of childhood become an ideological state used to push back against resistance and reform. Childhood, Meiners states, depends on social constructions and differ based on the group it refers to - freed slaves were talked about as children, while white wealthy…

Carissa Byrne Hessick: Plea Bargaining Bad Deals

Carissa Byrne Hessick, Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland "Buck" Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law. Professor Carissa Byrne Hessick discusses her book, "Punishment Without Trial," and how plea bargaining has overtaken the criminal justice system. While our rights to a jury trial, evidence, and confronting our accusers are all written into the Constitution by the Framers, American criminal prosecution relies upon the…

Dexter Voisin: Violence as Neighborhood Trauma

Dexter R. Voisin is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Dean in Applied Social Sciences at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University. Dean Dexter Voisin discusses his book "America the Beautiful and Violent: Black Youth and Neighborhood Trauma in Chicago." History and context play a huge role in how violence is processed by the residents of America's poorest, minority communities. Generations struggle to understand and…

Alexandra Natapoff: Misdemeanor System

Alexandra Natapoff, Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is an award-winning legal scholar and criminal justice expert. Professor Alexandra Natapoff discusses her book, Punishment without Crime. How America's Misdemeanor justice system targets the innocent, taxes the poor, and generates revenue for the public and private sector. We discuss why people plead guilty to low level infractions and how that impacts minority and at-risk populations.

Ronnie Dunn: Racial Profiling and Traffic Stops

Dr. Ronnie A. Dunn recently assumed the role as the inaugural executive director of The Diversity Institute at Cleveland State University, where he has been an associate professor of Urban Studies since 2004. Dr. Dunn discusses his work on traffic patterns, driving populations, and police ticketing in Cleveland. His work was pivotal in exposing Cleveland Police's racial bias' in traffic ticketing and in the use of traffic cameras.

Nancy Heitzeg: School to Prison Pipeline

Dr. Nancy A. Heitzeg is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Race/Ethnicity Program. Dr. Nancy Heitzeg discusses her research and book "The School to Prison Pipeline: Education, Discipline, and Racialized Double Standards." Dr. Heitzeg touches on police in schools, unfair suspensions, racialized biases, and the emergence of a system of medicalization that is different for white and black children.

Cullen Sweeney: Race and the Justice System

The Cuyahoga County Office of the Public Defender has been led by Chief Public Defender Cullen Sweeney since January 2021. Chief Public Defender, Cullen Sweeney, discusses the role of the Public Defender’s role in advocating for systemic criminal justice reform. We discuss bail reform, race equity, police and prosecution discretion, and sentencing reform.

Vida Johnson: Police Bias and Testimony

Vida B. Johnson is an Associate Professor of law at Georgetown Law where she teaches in the criminal defense clinics. She writes about policing and criminal procedure. She received her law degree from NYU and her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Johnson discusses her two articles on police bias. First, we talk about her article, "Bias in Blue: Instructing Jurors to Consider the Testimony of Police Officer Witnesses with Caution" where…

Alexis Hoag: Race and the Death Penalty

Alexis Hoag, Practitioner in Residence at Columbia Law School’s Holder Initiative, discusses the systemic racial issues at the heart of our Judicial system. Professor Hoag is an anti-death penalty advocate who recently published, "Valuing Black Lives: A Case for Ending the Death Penalty" and argued before the Ohio Supreme Court advocating for Glen Bates.

White Supremacy Part 7: Carceral Society and Abolition

Chiamaka Echebiri on White Supremacy, Christy Lopez on Carceral Logic, Anna Preston on Prisons and Mental Health, a debate between Micheal Javen and Marie Gottschalk, and finally an article by Jack Norton from the "New York Review of Books."