Category: Law and Justice

Reimagining Policing

Following the police murder of George Floyd, there have been calls to “Abolish, Defund, and Reform” the police. Elected officials around the country have called for 50% reductions in the police budgets that account for much of local government spending. At the same time, there is little agreement on the meaning of what could or should be defunded or what can be reformed; in many cases, the very language of this movement has impeded the necessary public debate about the appropriate role of police and policing in our society.

Dan Lindheim, professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, asked the panelists to address the meaning of abolishment and defunding the police in relation to the disproportionate levels of crime and violence that affect low-income communities of color.

Philadelphia chief of police, Danielle Outlaw, cited a Philadelphia poll showing majority support for reform rather than abolishment or the reduction of department size.

Nikki Fortunato Bas, President of the Oakland City Council and co-chair of Oakland’s Reimagining Police Taskforce, discussed an effective public safety system that includes alternative responses to non-violent calls and linked the policing crisis to the federal government’s dismantling of the social safety net.

As a leading national expert on police bias and police reform, Jack Glaser, professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, discussed the clear racial bias that lies within the policing system especially with “proactive policing.”

The views of experienced police, elected officials and faculty experts at UC Berkeley sheds light on these critical, and timely, issues.

Watch Reimagining Policing.

Criminal Justice Reform in California

For decades California’s incarceration rate mirrored that of the nation, increasing five-fold between the early 1970s and the mid-2000s. Since 2010 California has slowly turned away from mass incarceration through a series of criminal justice reforms, including changing criminal sentencing and law enforcement practices to reduce prison populations.

What has California done right in this transformation, and where has it fallen short? What would a truly just criminal justice system look like? UC Berkeley’s Steven Raphael looks at the last decade of prison reform including reducing overcrowding, the impacts of proposition 47 and the effects of racial disproportionality in criminal justice involvement.

Raphael is a Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and holds the James D. Marver Chair at the Goldman School of Public Policy. His research focuses on the economics of low-wage labor markets, housing, and the economics of crime and corrections. His most recent research focuses on the social consequences of the large increases in U.S. incarceration rates and racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes. Raphael also works on immigration policy, research questions pertaining to various aspects of racial inequality, the economics of labor unions, social insurance policies, homelessness, and low-income housing.

Watch Criminal Justice Reform in California .

Investing in the Future

How do we connect youth who are struggling to the possibility of a brighter future? We meet them where they are with opportunity and compassion. Youth advocates from the spheres of education, non-profit, and health come together in this engaging conversation to talk about how they implement programs, how they navigate challenges, and how they found their career paths.

This panel is part of the Global Empowerment Summit that aims to activates changemakers around collaborative solutions in the areas of empowerment, education, sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and social impact.

Watch Guiding Lost Youth to a Better Future – Global Empowerment Summit 2019.

To watch more, please visit https://uctv.tv/global-empowerment-summit/

Imagining Prison Abolition

Imagine a world that is more just, laws that are more compassionate and people being freer.

Georgetown Law professor and author Paul Butler is very familiar with the U.S. criminal justice system. As a former prosecutor, he once fought for long sentences. Now he’s advocating for the abolition of prisons. While that sounds extreme, in this talk he explores what would replace prisons, how people who cause harm could be dealt with in the absence of incarceration, and why abolition would make everyone safer and our society more just.

Incarceration is a relatively recent development in the history of punishment, with the first modern prison constructed in Philadelphia in the early 1800s. The American penitentiary was intended as a reform, making the institution of punishment more humane and rehabilitative. Because the United States now locks up more people than almost any country in the history of the world, this nation is perhaps the best laboratory to assess the success of the experiment. By virtually any measure, prisons have not worked. They are sites of cruelty, dehumanization, and violence, as well as subordination by race, class, and gender. Prisons traumatize virtually all who come into contact with them. Is there a better way? He posits that 50% of the prison population could be released and we would feel no effect.

Butler frequently consults on issues of race and criminal justice. He feels the system is broken and advocates for non-violent drug offenders to receive treatment rather than punishment. Abolition of prison could be the ultimate reform. Butler is not saying there should be no consequences for criminality. He calls it gradual decarceration and looks at ways to accomplish the goals of prison more effectively.

Butler is a Professor in Law at Georgetown. His most recent book Chokehold: Policing Black Men, published in July 2017, was named one of the 50 best non-fiction books of 2017 by The Washington Post. The New York Times described Chokehold as the best book on criminal justice reform since The New Jim Crow. It was a finalist for the 2018 NAACP Image Award for best non-fiction.

Watch — Prison Abolition, and a Mule with Paul Butler

Criminal Justice and the Latinx Community

The criminal justice system’s impact on Latina and Latino people in Southern California and across the nation was the focus of the annual UCLA Law Review symposium at the UCLA School of Law. Featuring leading scholars and practitioners who work to uncover and combat the ways in which bias affects Latinx communities’ interactions with law enforcement, panelists addressed incarceration, policing, community organizing and criminal adjudication, plus related issues involving ethics and capital punishment.

UCLA Law professor emeritus Gerald López delivered the event’s keynote address. He captivated the crowd with reflections on his childhood in East Los Angeles in the 1950s, where he watched the criminal justice system target Latinx people — activity that, he noted, continues to this day.

“It left impressions on me that shape everything I do,” he said while encouraging budding attorneys and activists to continue his lifelong effort to respond to those challenges and “change the world.”

Browse more programs in Latinx Communities, Race, and the Criminal Justice System