Spotlight
In November 2024, just after the U.S. presidential election, we hosted a full-day conference on media mythmaking of punishment and safety. The day produced a series of timeless, generative conversations with perennial relevance about how media organizations, often working in concert with scholars, produce and reproduce damaging and false narratives about race and crime. The brilliant contributions from a diverse slate of speakers across journalism, academia, policy, organizing, and directly impacted communities surfaced a series of key questions, critiques, and ideas for progress. Dive into the resources collected on these pages to revisit the content from the conference, learn more about our speakers’ writing and other projects, and find a non-exhaustive repository of related research, events, and recordings.
The Enduring Relevance of "Criminal Law as a Tool of Authoritarian Control"
As the spring semester gets underway, domestic and global events make it an unsettlingly perfect time to revisit our fall speaker series, "Criminal Law as a Tool of Authoritarian Control." In the last month, we have seen escalations abroad and at home:
- A sovereign nation was breached by the U.S. military and a foreign head of state captured in the name of a U.S. domestic criminal arrest warrant through extraterritorial law enforcement
- The head of the U.S. central bank has been targeted with a criminal investigation
- Multiple people have been executed by federal agents
- Detention in camps, jails, prisons, and uninhabitable office buildings of migrants continues at an unprecedented pace
Click here to continue reading about The Enduring Relevance of "Criminal Law as a Tool of Authoritarian Control."
Professor Sandra Susan Smith and Katy Naples-Mitchell (co-author along with Ali Mirza, MPP 2024 and Isabella Jorgensen, MPP 2022) discuss our new report, Understanding Racial Disparities in the Massachusetts Pretrial System. “The goal of this report is to be a blueprint for evidence-based reforms that policymakers and advocates can carry forward without delay,” said Naples-Mitchell. “One of our global takeaways is that best intentions are not enough to ensure that policy is implemented in a racially equitable way.” Read the full interview here. Katy Naples-Mitchell also has a new op-ed in Commonwealth, On bail policy, Massachusetts must catch up.
Research from Faculty and Affiliates
Events
Our Fall 2025 speaker series looked at the relationship between criminalization, criminal punishment bureaucracies, and authoritarian control. We explored questions about the preconditions of authoritarianism, and how authoritarian regimes use narratives of crime and punishment, as well enforcement of criminal or quasi-criminal violations, to target marginalized groups and punish dissent.
Recordings of all events in the series are available on our YouTube channel.
News and Commentary
What’s missing from Healey’s court picks
Boston Globe, March 20, 2026
Featured: PCJ research from the Roundtable on Racial Disparities in MA Criminal Courts
‘Alabama Solution’ Oscar nod draws eyes of the world to deadly prison crisis: Is there an answer?
AL.com, March 15, 2026
Quoted: Katy Naples-Mitchell
CompStat, Meet SafeStat
Vital City, February 19, 2026
Featured: Government Performance Lab
Some local police, sheriff and DA offices are communicating often with ICE, records show
WGBH, February 19, 2026
Quoted: Katy Naples-Mitchell
A surprising theory for why some people become criminals
The Boston Globe, February 16, 2026
Featured: Robert Sampson
‘We’ve got it backwards.’ Cameras are everywhere in Mass. So why can’t they catch speeders?
The Boston Globe, February 16, 2026
Quoted: Katy Naples-Mitchell
Rule of Law 101 explores pivotal decisions in U.S. legal history
Harvard Law Today, February 12, 2026
Featured: Alexandra Natapoff
Demonstrators Call for Independent Probe, Firings in Shacoby Kenny Death
Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, February 5, 2026
Quoted: Katy Naples-Mitchell
Judges’ awareness of racial bias does not mitigate disparities in rates of defendant release, Harvard professor says in Brown talk
The Brown Daily Herald, January 30, 2026
Featured: Will Dobbie
The door-to-door terror in Minneapolis
WBUR Cognoscenti, January 18, 2026
Commentary by Nancy Gertner
‘The brother was being beat on’: Inmates detail violence that preceded South Bay death
The Boston Globe, December 27, 2025
Quoted: Katy Naples-Mitchell
How a sociologist explains Chicago's decline in violent crime
Crain's Chicago Business, December 22, 2025
Featured: Robert Sampson
On bail policy, Massachusetts must catch up
Commonwealth, November 22, 2025
Op-ed by Katy Naples-Mitchell
Harvard idealizes pluralism. It needs restorative justice instead.
The Boston Globe, November 17, 2025
Op-ed by Lara Jirmanus, Aaron Shakow and Sandra Susan Smith
Course Guide
Our Program in Criminal Justice course guide has been updated for the Spring semester. It contains a broad selection of courses from across Harvard's different schools. Many of the courses are taught by our PCJ faculty affiliates. Topics include policing, mass incarceration, injury prevention, firearms, gender violence, cybersecurity, and abolitionist movements. Please save space in your course shopping cart for Sandra Susan Smith's new spring course, The Myths of Public Safety: Race, Inequality, and the U.S. Criminal Legal System.
(Updated January 6, 2026)