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Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline Project Conference

Data Democratization:
Building Strategies to Disrupt and Dismantle the Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline

March 31, 2023

The Cradle-to-Prison (C2P) Pipeline embodies the cumulative impact of multiple factors — beginning before birth and persisting through childhood, adolescence,and the teen years — that disproportionately divert youth from communities of color toward incarceration. Join Northeastern Law’s Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration (CPIAC) for this conference focused on providing an interdisciplinary collaboration space to examine the collateral consequences that result from systems involvement and, more importantly, to generate data-driven solutions to disrupt mass incarceration.

Many systems that contribute to future incarceration, including lack of housing or pervasive poverty, operate as a birth penalty for historically under-resourced and under-invested communities. Increased data access and transparency about these contributors can serve as a tool for influencing legislation, advocacy and community activism within Massachusetts. This conference will focus on the potential of data democratization to dismantle harmful systems currently in place and to help level a playing field that is currently so tilted against vulnerable and marginalized communities.

CPIAC’s flagship research initiative, the Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline Project (C2P Project), launched in 2019 with a Northeastern University Tier 1 grant, is a collaboration among CPIAC; Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media and Design (CAMD) and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. This conference celebrates the C2P Project’s third anniversary, accomplishments to date and will create space to chart its future.

Speakers

The conference agenda features solution-oriented discussions of the family policing system, education justice and carceral conditions and post-carceral control.

Keynote Address

Alan Dettlaff is a professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, where he also served as dean through 2022. Professor Dettlaff began his career as a social worker in the family policing system, where he worked as a caseworker and administrator. Today, his work focuses on ending the harm that results from this system. In 2020, he helped to create and launch the upEND movement, a collaborative effort dedicated to abolishing the family policing system and building alternatives that focus on healing and liberation.

Professor Dettlaff received his bachelor’s degree in social work from Texas Christian University, and master’s and PhD in social work from the University of Texas at Arlington. He is author of the forthcoming book, Racist Intents: American Child Welfare in the Afterlife of Slavery and the Case for Abolition, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2023. He is also co-founding editor of Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal dedicated to developing and disseminating an abolitionist praxis in social work.

March 31, 2023 Conference Schedule
9:00 - 9:30 AM Breakfast
9:30 - 9:40 AM Welcome Remarks
9:40 - 10:45 AM Keynote Address by Professor Alan Dettlaff
10:45 AM - 11:00 AM Break
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM Panel Discussion: Family Policing
 
Panelists: 
Brianna Harvey
Associate Director, UCLA Bruin Resource Center, and PhD candidate, UCLA School of Education

David Kelly
Co-Director, Family Justice Group
 
Joyce McMillan
Founder and Executive Director, JMACForFamilies
 
Maya Pendleton
Co-Founding Member, upEND Movement
 
Facilitator: 
Sana Fadel, Deputy Director, Citizens for Juvenile Justice
12:15 - 1:15 PM Lunch with presentation by Northeastern Law Students:

“Keeping Families Together: Miranda Rights for Parents in the Predatory Family Policing System”
1:15-2:30 PM Panel Discussion: Education Justice
 
Panelists: 
Ghadah Makoshi
Community Advocate, ACLU of Pennsylvania

Zakiya Sankara-Jabar
Director of Education Policy, Wayfinder Foundation, and Co-Executive Director, Racial Justice NOW
 
Stephen Snekvik
Boston University student, and Youth Apprentice, Bikes Not Bombs
 
Erin Stewart ’20
Skadden Fellow, School to Prison Pipeline Project, Citizens for Juvenile Justice
 
Facilitator: 
Leon Smith, Executive Director, Citizens for Juvenile Justice
2:30 - 2:45 PM Break
2:45 - 4:00 PM Panel Discussion: Carceral Conditions and Post-Carceral Control
 
Panelists: 
Andrea James ’98
Founder and Executive Director, The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, and Founder, Families for Justice as Healing

Sarah Nawab ’20
Attorney, Prisoners’ Legal Services
 
David Rangaviz
Assistant Attorney General, Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, Civil Rights Division
 
Facilitator: 
Daniel Medwed, Distinguished Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University School of Law
4:00 - 4:10 PM Closing Remarks
4:15 - 5:00 PM Reception, Knowles Library 4th Floor

Mar 31, 2023

9:00 am to 4:30 pm

Register Online