Vermont Business Magazine Bennington College’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA) will host its annual Incarceration in America conference from October 4 - 5. The conference will include panel discussions on getting women off Rikers Island and designing a new women’s jail, with panelists from the Women's Community Justice Association, and panelists from The Osborne Association will discuss older prisoners, long-term prisoners, clemency, parole, post-release housing, and the role of children.
All events are free, open to the public, and will take place in the CAPA Symposium on Bennington’s campus. Registration for the event is recommended. Lunch will be served on Saturday afternoon.
The 2019 Incarceration in America conference is supported in part by a $5,000 grant from the Jacob & Valeria Langeloth Foundation, which supports work to create a more equitable and humane justice system.
The conference begins on Friday, October 4 at 7:00 pm with The Solutions We Need: Leadership by those with Lived Experience , a panel discussion with the Osborne Association and the Women’s Community Justice Association , moderated by DeAnna Hoskins, President and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA.
On Saturday, October 5 from 10:30 am - 12:00 pm, panelists from Women’s Community Justice Association will discuss Beyond Rosie’s 2020: The Vision, which concerns getting women off Rikers Island and designing a new women’s facility and community alternatives.
From 1:00 - 2:30 pm, panelists from the Osborne Association will discuss Justice Across Generations, regarding needed systemic changes to address the multi-generational effects and harms of mass incarceration and the punishment paradigm. In this effort, children of incarcerated parents and the crisis of long-term incarceration and aging in prison will be central to the conversation and to reforming laws and policies on sentencing and parole.
About the Incarceration in America Initiative
The United States has the highest documented rate of incarceration in the world, which reached its peak in 2007 and has been gradually declining since. In 2014, Bennington College launched the Incarceration in America initiative, which partners with distinguished advocates and providers to offer course curriculum, visiting speakers, theatrical events, think tanks, and conferences focused on developing public policy and political action in the post-tough-on-crime era.
Since the inception of the Incarceration in America initiative, CAPA has partnered with many organizations doing important work in this field, including JustLeadershipUSA, The Fortune Society, Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, and HousingPlus. Through this initiative, CAPA has addressed topics as far-reaching as higher education in prisons, the aging incarcerated population, women in prison, how to redefine justice and effect change, immigrant detention and deportation, and alternatives to incarceration.
BENNINGTON COLLEGE
Bennington College is a liberal arts college in southwestern Vermont that has distinguished itself as a vanguard institution within American higher education. It was the first to include the visual and performing arts in a liberal arts education. It is the only college to require that its students spend a term—every year—at work in the world. Bennington students work intensively with faculty to forge individual educational paths around their driving questions and interests.
Rooted in an abiding faith in the talent, imagination, and responsibility of the individual, Bennington invites students to pursue and shape their own intellectual inquiries, and in doing so to discover the profound interconnection of things.
Source: Bennington, VT: Bennington College. 9.19.2019. Learn more at bennington.edu.