Ending the Incarceration of Women and Girls
Thursday March 1st – 6:30-9pm
Columbia Law School, Rm 106
435 W 116th St, New York, NY 10027
Building the Movement: Conversations with Patrisse Khan-Cullors
Friday March 2nd 7:30-9:30pm – (Doors at 6:45pm – Event Starts at 7:30pm)
Lerner Hall, Columbia University
2920 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Closing Jails and Prisons – Morning and Afternoon Panels
Saturday March 3rd – 9:30am-5pm (registration starts at 9am)
Columbia School of Social Work
1255 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027
Building the Grassroots: Organizing Workshops
Sunday March 4th – 10-5pm
Columbia School of Social Work
1255 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027
Conference Overview:
Beyond the Bars: Closing Jails and Prisons
March 1-4, 2018
The 8th annual Beyond the Bars Conference of the Center for Justice at Columbia University seeks to contribute to the growing movement to close jails and prisons as a part of the larger struggle to end mass incarceration. In particular, we will focus on elevating the efforts led by grassroots organizers that include formerly incarcerated and directly impacted people.
Prison and jail closings have been taking place unevenly throughout the United States over the past decade. However, campaigns like the ones in New York, Los Angeles, and Milwaukee have helped to usher in a new phase, one that highlights the role of grassroots organizing and directly impacted leadership, and that has begun to put forth a more transformative vision of how to close jails and prisons and what comes in their place. Momentum for lasting change is building. Organizers, activists and scholars have been grappling with many of the deeply seeded issues related to incarceration and criminalization. From the movement to close youth prisons entirely, to centering the fight for racial justice, to highlighting the ways that women and lgbtq community are impacted, to focusing on the elderly inside prisons with long sentences that are about punishment not safety, to interrogating the effectiveness of punishment in reducing violence, we are at a moment where we are able to make concrete advances in reducing the carceral footprint.
It is our hope that this conference will bolster these efforts in the following ways:
- Convene and support a national network of people and organizations working to close jails and prisons across the country
- Help articulate a vision and analysis for closing jails and prisons and what comes in its place
- Address and examine some of the difficult issues and questions that arise in the efforts to close jails and prison
- Further catalyze university involvement in the struggle to end mass incarceration
Program
- Thursday March 1st: Ending the Incarceration of Women and Girls
- Friday March 2nd: Building the Movement with Patrisse Khan-Cullours
- Saturday March 3rd: Closing Jails and Prisons
- Sunday March 4th: Building the Grassroots
Register Now!