Making Room for Justice

Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson of Gary, Indiana and Judge Jed Rakoff of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York lead the distinguished group of speakers at this year’s 11^th annual John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America, scheduled for Feb 25-26, 2016, at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson

The symposium, Making Room for Justice: Crime, Public Safety & the Choices Ahead for Americans, explored the challenges of reforming the criminal justice system as the nation headed into a presidential election year.

Thanks to media attention and increasing community activism, a mainstream and bipartisan consensus for change has begun to emerge. But change will also require some difficult choices in areas for which a consensus is still elusive. Can our national debate make room for a real discussion of justice?

Topics on the 2016 agenda include federal and state perspectives on sentencing reform, a review of the President’s Task Force on 21^st Century Policing (one year later),  and the future of community-police relations.

Other speakers include: Al Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon university; Christine Coulter, Deputy Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department; Hassan Aden, research director at the International Association of Chiefs of Police; Sen. Gerald Malloy, chair of  South Carolina’s Sentencing Reform Oversight Council; Prof. Janice Johnson-Dias, Assistant Professor, John Jay College and co-founder,  GrassROOTS Community Foundation; and Keir Bradford-Gray, chief defender of the Philadelphia Defender Association. 

The symposium was organized by the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay, with support from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Pew Public Safety Performance Project and the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice.

A program agenda is available HERE.