Race, Education, and Criminal Justice Conference
University of Puget Sound, Saturday, October 6, 2012
Registration begins at 8 AM, Schneebeck Concert Hall
Breakout Sessions
(Morning Sessions: 11:15 AM-12:30 PM; Afternoon Sessions: 1:30 PM-2:45 PM)
The Prison Pipeline
A-1 Keeping Youth Out of the Prison Pipeline: School Discipline, Policies, and Practices
Panelists/Facilitators: Thelma Jackson and Pamala Sacks-Lawlar, co-chairs
The workshop explores some of the systems issues that contribute to the flow of students from school to the juvenile justice
system and often to the adult prison system. What can be done differently in our schools to provide a different option for
behavioral changes in our students other than entering them into the prison pipeline?
A-2 Resistance and Prison Abolition: Smashing the Pipeline
Panelists/Facilitators: Rachel Herzing and Isaac Ontiveros, staff members with Critical Resistance, a national
grassroots organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex.
This session explores what it takes to prevent people from being arrested or locked up in prison. The panelists will discuss
the organizing strategies necessary to build the social and political power required to stop the devastation that the reliance
on imprisonment and policing has brought to ourselves, our families, and our communities. Hopeful and inspiring Critical
Resistance challenges the belief that prisons are a necessary component of the democratic state.
A-3 Preventing Juvenile Offenders from Entering the Adult System
Panelists/Facilitators: Marco Salas, Pierce County Juvenile Court; Angie Thompson, Field Supervisor and
Program Manager for Aggression Replacement Training (A.R.T.); and Doug Vaskas, Family Functional Therapist
This session focuses on juveniles who have already been involved in the system and the best practices to keep them from
entering the adult system. Panelists will identify action steps that would improve coordination between institutions,
especially closing the gap between the courts and the schools.
A-4
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness Roundtable
Panelists/Facilitators: Dexter Gordon
This roundtable will discuss Michelle Alexander’s provocative thesis that mass incarceration reveals not a problem with
the criminal justice system but rather a new system of racial caste. Participants will explore her contention that colorblind
laws have racist results and that this new form of Jim Crow requires civil rights advocates to regroup and launch a new
conversation, a renewed commitment to care about criminals, and new forms of activism and leadership.
Education Inside the Criminal Justice System
B-1 Race and Stereotypes: Teaching Against the Carceral State
Panelists/Facilitators: Tanya Ezren (Chair), Ohio State University; Naomi Murakawa, University of
Washington; Stuart Smithers, “A Kinship of Captivities,” University of Puget Sound
This panel addresses the complexities of teaching against a punishing state and its aligned institutions and practices with
incarcerated populations.
B-2 Higher Education Inside
Panelists/Facilitators: Gillian Harkins, Freedom Education Project Puget Sound; Naomi Tajchman-Kaplan and
Miquel Rodriquez, Gateways for Incarcerated Youth in Olympia; Carole Estes, University Beyond Bars (at the
Monroe Correctional Complex); and Breea Willingham, researcher on the writings of black women who are
incarcerated.
This panel examines the kinds of educational programs available to those imprisoned, the role of education in helping
individuals with successful re-entry, and the needs and challenges of people of color in particular.
B-3 Co-curricular Programs to Support Educational Goals
Panelists/Facilitators: (Callista Brown, PLU)
The If project invites the currently imprisoned to reflect on the “What If’s” that might have prevented their
incarceration. Tuere Sala, attorney and prosecutor from Seattle, teaches non-violent communication and
meditation in Monroe and WCCW
B-4 Voices from the Inside (Stuart organizer)
To be confirmed
Post-Release Education and Transition
C-1 Cycles of Disparity: The Pitfalls and Possibilities of State Policies
Panelists/Facilitators: Becky Pettit, University of Washington; and Debbie Regala, State Senator, Vice Chair of
the Committee on Human Services and Corrections in the Washington Senate.
This panel will look at how policies within the state and the criminal justice system interact with and attempt to address
race, class and educational disparities in treatment and outcomes, emphasizing how these disparities have effects long
after formal incarceration.
C-2 Captive Queers: The Queer Experience Inside and Post-Release (Roman Christiaens, organizer)
Panelists/Facilitators: Angélica Cházaro (Attorney with NWIRP, who will speak about the detention of queer
immigrants); Alex West (Law Student at Seattle University, who will be speaking about the imprisonment and
experience of trans/gender non-conforming folks in the prison system); and a gay man of African heritage who
will speak about his experiences inside and post-release. Emily Thuma, a scholar who has done research on the
histories of institutionalization and imprisonment in relationship to gender and sexuality, will be the moderator.
The United States justice system has a long history of institutionalizing and criminalizing individuals whose sexuality,
gender identity and/or expression does not fit within a heterosexual and gender binary framework. Even in this age of
heightened exposure of queer and trans movement(s), LGBTQ individuals are disproportionality targeted by police,
incarcerated and inhumanely treated within the prison system. Drawing upon a variety of identities and experiences, this
panel will help to bring queer voices affected by the prison system to the forefront.
C-3 Post-prison Perspectives: Providing Services
Panelists/Facilitators: Theresa Power-Drutis, New Connections; Joseph Garcia, South Sound Community
College; Hector Ortiz, Work Source Pierce County, and Adrian Johnson, Department of Corrections (Retired).
These panelists will speak to the programs listed as well as others that would benefit from greater integration with each
other, the schools, and communities.
C-4 Collateral Consequences: Effects on the Formerly Imprisoned, Families, Schools, and Communities
Panelists/Facilitators: Erin Jones will address issues that former juvenile offenders experience upon returning to
public schools; Warren Gohl, a department of corrections professional and religious provider for American Indian
prison population will speak to special needs and experiences of native peoples; Cammie Carr has expertise with
youth, prison, and justice issues.
This session addresses how mass incarceration affects the lives of people and communities, the challenges for schools in
incorporating the formerly imprisoned and of the latter in gaining access to education, and how these issues are
complicated by race.