PUNISHMENT: THE U.S. RECORD: A Social Research Conference
The New School, 66 West 12th Street, November 30 — December 1
Featuring a Special Presentation by Richard Gere and Carey Lowell
NEW YORK, NY, October 30—On November 30 and December 1, Social Research, a leading journal of opinion and social science based at The New School for Social Research, will host “Punishment: The U.S. Record,” a two-day conference featuring leading activists, writers, and scholars in public dialogue about the foundations of American punishment, the effects of current punishment practices, and alternatives to our incarceration-driven state.
Despite dramatic drops in crime rates, our nation's prison population has soared by more than 600 percent since the 1970s. In 2005, the total number of incarcerated Americans topped two million, with approximately one in every 136 U.S. residents in jail. Black men, who make up 6 percent of the U.S. population, constitute more than 40 percent of our prison population. A black male born today has a 32 percent chance of spending time in prison. Eleven states do not allow ex-cons to vote. Nearly 2,800,000 American children have at least one parent in prison.
Conference participants will consider what all this means for our democracy today. They will reconstruct the often forgotten history of our ideas of punishment, while examining how our alarmingly high incarceration rate destroys families, disenfranchises communities, and weakens an already vulnerable labor force. Richard Gere, long concerned about the children of incarcerated parents, will read and discuss prison writings the evening of November 30 with his wife Carey Lowell; and Brent Staples of the New York Times will moderate a roundtable discussion the evening of December 1 on better ways of exercising political power and pursuing punishment.
Other speakers include Mark Dow (author of American Gulag); Jeremy Travis (president, John Jay College of Criminal Justice); Nancy Gertner (judge, U.S. District Court, Boston); Marc Mauer (executive director, Sentencing Project); Susan Tucker (director, After Prison Initiative, Open Society Institute’s U.S. Justice Fund), Elizabeth Gaynes (director, Osborne Association); and Stephen B. Bright (president, Southern Center for Human Rights).
Influential legal scholars will also participate. They include James Q. Whitman (Yale Law School); Andrew von Hirsch (University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law); Bernard E. Harcourt (University of Chicago Law School); George Kateb (Princeton University, Program in Law and Public Affairs); David Garland (New York University School of Law); Jonathan Simon (University of California, Berkeley, School of Law); and John J. Donohue III (Yale Law School).
On December 2, the Metropolitian Museum of Art will host tours of its artistic representations of punishment in conjunction with this conference. Cosponsored by the ACLU, the conference is generously supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Open Society Institute’s U.S. Justice Fund, the Ford Foundation and the J.M. Kaplan Fund.
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION DETAILS AND CONFERENCE PROGRAM
To register, visit www.socres.org/punishment/register.htm. The cost of attendance is $50 for the entire conference, $12 for individual sessions. For students, full attendance is $15, $5 for individual sessions. For more information, email [email protected] or call 212. 229.5776 x3121. The conference will take place November 30 and December 1 at The New School, 66 West 12th Street (near Sixth Avenue), first floor, New York, NY.
*THURSDAY, November 30*
10:30 a.m. – 1:15 p.m. Session I: Why We Punish: The Foundation of Our Concepts of Punishment
James Q. Whitman, Yale Law School
Moshe Halbertal, New York University School of Law
George Kateb, Princeton University
Bernard E. Harcourt, University of Chicago Law School
Moderator: Suzanne Last Stone, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
2:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Session II: What and How We Punish: Law, Justice and Punishment
Michael Tonry, University of Minnesota Law School
John J. Donohue III, Yale Law School
Andrew von Hirsch, University of Cambridge
David Garland, New York University School of Law
Moderator: James Jacobs, Center for Research in Crime and Justice, New York University School of Law
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Session III: Special Event
Richard Gere and Carey Lowell Read and Discuss Prison Writings
*FRIDAY, December 1*
10:00 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. Session IV: Who We Punish: The Carceral State
Jonathan Simon, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Bruce Western, Princeton University
Mark Dow, author of American Gulag
Lorna A. Rhodes, University of Washington
Moderator: Susan Tucker, The After Prison Initiative, Open Society Institute
1:45 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Session V: Consequences of a Carceral State
David Weiman, Barnard College
Todd Clear, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Elizabeth Gaynes, The Osborne Association
Jeremy Travis, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Moderator: Deborah Mukamal, Prisoner Reentry Institute, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Session VI: Roundtable Discussion on Alternatives to a Carceral State
Gordon Bazemore, Florida Atlantic University
Stephen B. Bright, Southern Center for Human Rights
Nancy Gertner, U.S. District Court, Boston
Marie Gottschalk, University of Pennsylvania
James Jacobs, Center for Research in Crime and Justice, New York University School of Law
Marc Mauer, Executive Director, Sentencing Project
Christopher Uggen, University of Minnesota
Moderator: Brent Staples, New York Times
About Social Research Journal and Conference Series
The first issue of Social Research was published by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) in 1934. Since then, Social Research has appeared quarterly, providing an unparalleled international forum for the study of the social sciences. More than 2,000 authors from around the world have made Social Research truly international. Articles in the journal cover various fields of the social sciences and the humanities, promoting the interdisciplinary aims that have characterized NSSR since its inception. The Social Research conference series was founded in 1988 by Arien Mack, editor of the journal and Marrow Professor of Psychology at NSSR. The series is dedicated to the maxim that “to forget history is to risk repeating it.” For nearly 20 years, it has enhanced public understanding of critical and contested issues by exploring them in their broadest and most urgent historical contexts. Recent conferences have addressed such issues as the political uses and abuses of fear, the role of fairness in our lives, the public and private spheres of Islam, and the ways that science influences public policy.
About The New School for Social Research
The New School for Social Research was founded in 1919 by a distinguished group of intellectuals, some of whom were teaching at Columbia University in New York City during the First World War. Fervent pacifists, they took a public stand against the war and were censured by the university's president. The outspoken professors responded by resigning from Columbia and later opening their own university for adults in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. It became a place where people could exchange ideas freely with scholars and artists representing a wide range of intellectual, aesthetic, and political orientations.
During the 1920s, Alvin Johnson, the school's first president, collaborated regularly with colleagues in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. They made him aware of the danger Hitler presented to democracy and the civilized world, alerting him to the seriousness of the threat before many in the United States had grasped it. With the financial support of enlightened philanthropists, Johnson responded immediately and, in 1933, created within The New School a University in Exile to provide a haven for scholars and artists whose lives were threatened by National Socialism. While some of these refugees remained at The New School for many years, many others went on to influence artistic and political life in the United States. Today The New School for Social Research remains a place where professors and students take risks to defend their intellectual commitments and political beliefs.