02.26.24 —Northeastern Law’s Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration has been awarded a $2.5 million Impact Engine Grant from Northeastern University to expand its Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline Project (C2P Project) over the next four years. The C2P Project is a collaboration among the Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration, the College of Art, Media and Design (CAMD), and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH).
The Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline is defined as a web of legal and social systems — rooted in structural racism, beginning before birth, and persisting through the teen years — that diverts youth, especially Black youth and other youth of color, toward juvenile and adult incarceration. In order to dismantle the Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline, we must comprehensively address the interplay of systems that contributes to this injustice. The C2P Project is a Massachusetts model of interdisciplinary data collection, mapping, analysis, and original research that illuminates the web of systems that contribute to the pipeline.
In the past year, the C2P Project focused on collecting and analyzing school discipline and school-based arrest data in Massachusetts. Over the next four years, the C2P Project will collect and analyze data regarding the family regulation system, housing/ homelessness, and health and mental health disparities. In addition, faculty and staff will conduct original research to fill in gaps in the available data and analyze the ways in which these interconnected structures create disproportionate representation of marginalized youth in criminal and other punitive systems.
“By making this data and research tool accessible to advocates, policymakers and the public, we hope to identify structural interventions that will enable us dismantle the pipeline and to create a model for developing similar interventions in other states,” said Professor Lucy Williams, faculty director of CPIAC.
About Northeastern University School of Law
The nation’s leader in experiential legal education since 1968, Northeastern University School of Law offers the longest-running, most extensive experience-based legal education program in the country. Northeastern guarantees its students unparalleled practical legal work experiences through its signature Cooperative Legal Education Program. More than 1,000 employers worldwide in a wide range of legal, government, nonprofit and business organizations participate in the program. With a focus on social justice and innovation, Northeastern University School of Law blends theory and practice, providing students with a unique set of skills and experiences to successfully practice law.
For more information, contact d.feldman@northeastern.edu