Matthew Clair is the author of Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court. In the book, he uncovers how privilege and inequality play out in criminal court interactions, especially in the attorney-client relationship. In this conversation, we explore the attorney-client relationship in greater detail and the ways that it exacerbates inequality and legitimates injustice in the courts.

Voir Dire: Conversations from the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School

Attorney-Client Relationship as Locus of Inequality w/ Matthew Clair

Alec Karakatsanis is the author of Usual Cruelty: the Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System and the founder of Civil Rights Corps. We discuss why he calls it the criminal injustice system and the dangers of criminal justice "reform."

The Criminal Injustice System with Alec Karakatsanis

A national study commissioned by Public Rights Project revealed a massive enforcement gap in corporate abuse--with 54% of those surveyed saying they have experienced wage theft, predatory lending and debt collection, corporate pollution, and/or unsafe rental conditions at least once in the past 10 years. The criminal legal system could intervene. Hear how from Jenny Montoya Tansey, PRP's Policy Director.

The Corporate Enforcement Gap with Jenny Montoya Tansey

Most agree that the police are asked to do far too much, including tasks that they are not trained to do and so are ill-equipped to do well. The CAHOOTS model is an exciting one. It relieves the police from undertaking tasks for which they are ill-equipped, especially those related to mental health crises, it does so effectively and without force/violence, and it does so far more cheaply. We invited Tim Black to learn more about CAHOOTS, how it got started, what they do and how they do it, and why this might be a critical option for other jurisdictions across the country that are trying to address public safety issues without such a heavy reliance on police.

The CAHOOTS Model

Wendy Still has achieved remarkable reductions in the probation population while serving as Chief Probation Officer of San Francisco and Alameda Counties, California. She discusses what progressive probation looks like, including in the context of the defund movement, as well as her experiences during her long career.

Progressive Probation with Wendy Still

We're back...with some updates and some new voices. Professor Sandra Susan Smith interviews Cat Brooks, founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, about policing and reimagining community safety.

The Anti Police-Terror Project with Cat Brooks

While we're on hiatus, we're replaying some of our most popular tracks to help people meet this moment of renewed interest in changing the criminal legal system. The use of big data in the criminal legal system raises some thorny legal, cultural, and ethical questions. What level of surveillance are we willing to tolerate? Is data actually objective? What will happen to legal standards like reasonable suspicion as our information changes? These are questions we need to ask and answer soon, because big data is already infiltrating law enforcement and the criminal legal system more broadly.

Popular Demand: Big Data Policing with Andrew Ferguson

While we're on hiatus, we're replaying some of our most popular tracks to help people meet this moment of renewed interest in changing the criminal legal system. Jonathan Rapping is the founder of Gideon's Promise, an organization dedicated to changing the culture of public defense. He'll describe why the work of public defenders is important, what good public defense looks like, and what public defenders can do to change the criminal legal system.

Popular Demand: Public Defenders with Jonathan Rapping

While we're on hiatus, we're replaying some of our most popular tracks to help people meet this moment of renewed interest in changing the criminal legal system. Restorative justice is a paradigm-shifting approach to criminal justice. Fania Davis is a long-time social justice activist, a restorative justice scholar and professor, and a civil rights attorney with a Ph.D. in indigenous knowledge. She is also the Founder of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth. We'll discuss the restorative justice framework and what it actually looks like on the ground.

Popular Demand: Restorative Justice with Fania Davis

While we're on hiatus, we're replaying some of our most popular tracks to help people meet this moment of renewed interest in changing the criminal legal system. Within three years of release, about two-thirds of people released from prison are rearrested. Wesley Caines, the Reentry and Community Outreach Coordinator at the Bronx Defenders, tells us about the traumas of going to prison and the ways in which we set people released from prison up for failure.

Popular Demand: The Psychological Traumas of Leaving Prison with Wesley Caines

We discuss mental illness and the criminal system with Alisa Roth, author of Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness.

Mental Illness & the Criminal System

Alexandra Natapoff talks about her new book, Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal. This book is absolutely essential for understanding the criminal system in America. We discuss the misdemeanor system’s role as a system of social control, revenue generation, racial oppression, etc.–but certainly not as a system of justice.

Punishment Without Crime with Alexandra Natapoff

Emily Baxter is the founder of We Are All Criminals. In this episode, we examine the ways in which privilege serves to define criminality. You can see more about the project at https://www.weareallcriminals.org/

We Are All Criminals with Emily Baxter

Prison officials regularly block access to huge amounts of reading material for incarcerated people—and they do it in troublingly arbitrary ways. We discuss the written word’s ability to highlight and amplify the humanity of people in prison and the power of information. James Tager is the Deputy Director of Free Expression Research at PEN America and Robert Pollock is the Prison Writing Program Coordinator at PEN America.

The Biggest Book Ban in America with James Tager and Robert Pollock

This week we talk to Anand Swaminathan, an attorney at Loevy and Loevy—a national firm that does civil rights work adjacent to the criminal legal system. We discuss the role of civil litigators in changing the criminal legal system.

Civil Litigation & Criminal Justice Reform with Anand Swaminathan

Harvard Law School's Criminal Justice Policy Program brings you a series of in-depth conversations with the people on the front lines reforming the criminal legal system. Hosted by Schuyler Daum.

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Voir Dire: Conversations from the Criminal Justice Policy Pr...

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