Past Events

Our Fall 2025 speaker series explored the relationship between criminalization, criminal punishment bureaucracies, and authoritarian control.

Dive into the resources on how media organizations, often working in concert with scholars, produce and reproduce damaging and false narratives about race and crime.

This series defined what the system of care looks like for people who cycle through the criminal legal system, discussed outcomes, and examined case studies to build a different future.

A powerful discussion as Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, and Selwyn Jones, uncle of George Floyd, share their experiences and insights on transforming personal loss into impactful advocacy for social change.

This series explored how modern surveillance, AI, predictive policing, facial recognition, and more may shrink the criminal legal system’s footprint or expand criminalization into new domains.

Experts discussed ways to create safe and thriving communities, re-shape public policy, and experiment with building an infrastructure of care, support, stability, accountability, and healing from harm.

In addition to our various themed speaker series, we also host events on special topics which allow us to benefit from presentations from experts whose work lies outside of these specific topics.

Recent years have seen unprecedented protests against police violence. This event brings together advocates and activists from three continents for a conversation about civil-society-led strategies to combat police violence.

Join Cornell William Brooks, Yanilda María González, Sandra Susan Smith, and Setti Warren live in the JFK Jr. Forum for a discussion about policing and racial justice.

We discussed how myths of public safety have been the basis of efforts toward mass incarceration, aided in the destruction of lives and communities, and fed huge racial disparities.

In this series our speakers discussed how the system fails to deliver on core precepts of “justice” and examined how advocates and practitioners are working to implement evidence-based approaches while changing norms on the ground.

Expert panelists discuss their research on the role of policing and prosecution in traffic enforcement and answer audience questions.

Ian Loader, Professor of Criminology at Oxford University discussed policing in the UK and what lessons it might offer the US.

We spoke with activists from Black youth-led movements leading the struggle against racial injustice, from police violence to structural racism on racialized and low-income communities.

The Racial Disparities in MA Criminal Courts report marked a potentially important turning point in efforts to address long-standing racial inequities in the Commonwealth’s court system. The roundtable brought together experts to engage in creative dialogue and problem-solving on the topic.

We co-hosted a live stream screening and panel discussion inspired by HLS professor Alexandra Natapoff’s book Punishment Without Crime: How our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.

Experts discussed what different approaches to community safety could look like and ongoing efforts in communities across the country to make real, sustained change.