Premal Dharia, James Forman, Jr. & Maria Hawilo — Dismantling Mass Incarceration – with Clint Smith

In recent years, a searching national conversation has called attention to the social and racial injustices that define America’s criminal system. But despite growing movements for change, the vast machinery of the carceral state remains very much intact. How can its damage and depredations be undone?

In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates–Premal Dharia, James Forman Jr., and Maria Hawilo–provide us with tools to move from despair and critique to hope and action. Dismantling Mass Incarceration surveys various approaches to confronting the carceral state, exploring bold but practical interventions involving police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, prisons, and even life after prison. Rather than prescribing solutions, the book offers a forum for discussions–and disagreements–about how to best confront the harms of mass incarceration. The contributors range from noted figures such as Angela Y. Davis, Clint Smith, and Larry Krasner to local organizers, advocates, scholars, lawyers, and judges, as well as people who have been incarcerated. The result is an invaluable guide for anyone who wishes to understand mass incarceration–and hasten its end.

Premal Dharia is the executive director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration at Harvard Law School and is coeditor in chief of Inquest. She has written for The Washington Post, CNN, Slate, and other publications. James Forman, Jr. is a professor of law at Yale Law School. He has written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, numerous law reviews, and other publications. A former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, he spent six years as a public defender in Washington, D.C., where he cofounded the Maya Angelou Public Charter School. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning Locking Up Our Own. Maria Hawilo is a distinguished professor in residence at Loyola University Law School, Chicago. She has written for The Appeal, Injustice Watch, and other publications. All three editors are former public defenders.

This event will be moderated by Clint Smith, staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and the poetry collections Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award and most recently Above Ground. His poetry collection, Above Ground, was recently published on March 28th. Smith is also the host of the YouTube series Crash Course Black American History. Born and raised in New Orleans, he currently lives in Maryland with his wife and their two children.