Dillard to host symposium titled ‘Crime and Punishment…’

19th March 2012   ·   0 Comments

Symposium will bring together academics, public officials, inmates and others to probe crime and incarceration in N.O. and the Black community

From March 20-22, Dillard University will host “Crime and Punishment: African-Americans in a ‘Post-Racial’ (?) United States,” a symposium designed to explore problems of crime and incarceration in the U.S. today, their outsized impact on the Black community, and the dubious concept of 21st-century America as “post-racial.” Criminal justice in New Orleans – the city with the nation’s highest per-capita murder rate — will also be addressed throughout three days of seminars and panel discussions.

Public officials, students, community organizers, current and former inmates, crime victims, criminologists and other scholars have been invited to take part in this dialogue, which aims to define problems of crime and incarceration; explore their root causes; illuminate their societal context; examine attempts at education and crime prevention; and offer suggestions to help justice and rehabilitation prevail for the common good.

Dr. James Turner, founding director of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University, will deliver the symposium’s opening lecture, “From Mass Enslavement to Mass Segregation to Mass Incarce­ration.” Dr. Michael Tillotson of the University of Pittsburgh will give a lecture entitled “A Post-Racial United States Society: Fact or Fantasy?” Dillard University’s Dr. Alan Colón, professor of African world studies, and Dr. Carroll Wiltz, professor of sociology, will convene the symposium.

The Dillard symposium takes on added importance in the wake of two recent fatal police shootings in New Orleans and efforts to reform the New Orleans Police Department, which the U.S. Department of Justice described as “corrupt” and “abusive” in a report last year.

All events will be held in the Georges Auditorium of the PSB on Dillard’s campus. The symposium is free and open to the public.

A complete schedule of events follows:

• Tuesday, March 20

I. The St. Clair Drake Lecture: “From Mass Enslavement to Mass Segregation to Mass Incarceration.” 3:00 p.m.

II. Lecture: “A Post-Racial United States Society: Fact or Fantasy?” 7:00 p.m.

• Wednesday, March 21

III. Roundtable Discussion: “Crime and Punishment in African-American Communities.” 3:00 p.m.

IV. Panel Discussion: “The Incarceration Experience: Inmates from Angola State Prison.” 7:00 p.m.

• Thursday, March 22

V. Students’ Panel Discussion: “Mass Incarceration and Color­blindness.” 10:00 a.m.

VI. Roundtable Discussion: “The Struggle Continues: Where Do We Go From Here?” 7:00 p.m.

This article was originally published in the March 19, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper