St. Francis College Prison Reform & Re-Entry Conference

Agenda

All day: 6X9, Solitary Confinement Exhibit and Experience

6x9 is a virtual reality solitary confinement experience.

Lasting only nine minutes, viewers experience what over 100,000 currently incarcerated people are experiencing, sometimes for decades at a time.

In New York alone, more than 5,000 people are locked in these human cages. 6x9 is completely narrated by these solitary survivors , including St. Francis College Post Prison Program graduate Johnny Perez (SFC ’18). It is aimed at educating general audiences about the psychological impacts of solitary confinement and how it is used in American prisons.

10:10 - 11:05am St. Francis College Post-Prison Student Panel

• Current students and graduates from St. Francis College's Post Prison Program discuss the benefits and challenges of attending college during the re-entry process.

• Moderated by Johnny Perez (SFC ’18) of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture

11:05am -12:20pm Tables | Networking

• Community-based organizations address issues of mass incarceration and re-entry challenges.

12:20 – 1:45pm Keynote Panel Address: Emily Bazelon with Maksim Kreyngold and Tarari White

Emily Bazelon (pictured above, left) will discuss Charged: The Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration, her New York Times bestseller and companion podcast, which tells the story of her journey through a specialized Brooklyn court designed to swiftly and harshly punish illegal gun possession. Along the way, she discovers the politics outside the courtroom start to change when a new generation of activists and insiders began challenging the old system of which the gun court was part (read the Slate story here).

Bazelon will be joined by Tarari White (pictured above, right), a first-year student at St. Francis College featured in the Charged podcast who participated in a diversion program that saved him from jail. Also joining her will be Maksim Kreyngold (pictured above, center), Tarari’s social worker at the Office of the Brooklyn District Attorney (also featured in Charged) who helped Tarari navigate the program.

Emily Bazelon is a Lecturer in Law, Senior Research Scholar in Law, and Truman Capote Fellow at Yale Law School. She is also a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. In addition to Charged, she is the author of the best-seller Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy. She co-hosts a popular podcast, the Slate Political Gabfest.

Before joining the Times, Bazelon worked for nine years as a senior editor at Slate. She has been a Soros media fellow, an editor and writer at Legal Affairs magazine, and a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She was a frequent guest on the Colbert Report.

Bazelon is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.

1:45 – 2:30pm Lunch | Networking

2:30 – 3:45pm Education in Prison & Innovative Re-Entry Initiatives Panel

• Moderated & Organized by Dr. Michelle Gantt of Metropolitan Detention Center

• Panelists: Thomas Gregory, Senior Executive for Law Enforcement Operations, Kings County District Attorney’s Office; Yolanda Johnson, Chief of Housing Community Activities, NYC Housing Authority; Keston Jones, Program Manager, SCO Family of Services

4 - 5pm Closing Reception