After Ferguson and Baltimore: The Past, Present, and Future of Criminal Justice Policy in America

Event Details

This event will be held in Nau Hall Auditorium (Room 101) on Central Grounds

From Ferguson to Baltimore, the reemergence of police brutality crises in American cities has sparked a series of passionate debates surrounding the intersection of race and criminal justice. Reoccurring problems associated with the excessive use of deadly force by police officers are under intense scrutiny by the national media, policymakers, and social activist groups across the country. The Miller Center's Great Issues program, in conjunction with the Black Student Research Network (BSRN), the Black Student Alliance (BSA), the Latino Student Alliance (LSA), the NAACP, and the University Democrats, will explore these issues through a panel discussion featuring Ronald Hampton and Elizabeth Hinton. The panel will uncover the nature and history of policing in America, while also looking forward to policy solutions of the future. 

Ronald Hampton serves on the advisory board of the National Police Accountability Project. He retired from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department after twenty-three years of service as Community Relations Officer. Hampton is the immediate past Executive Director of the National Black Police Association, Inc., where he was involved in designing and delivering community policing and problem solving training for residents in public housing as well as overseeing a project dealing with intervention and crime prevention through alternative community sentencing. He has assisted the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Services and has worked with the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Amnesty International USA, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Elizabeth Hinton is assistant professor in the Department of History and the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Hinton’s research focuses on the persistence of poverty and racial inequality in the twentieth century United States. Her current scholarship considers the transformation of domestic social programs and urban policing after the Civil Rights Movement. In her forthcoming book, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: Race and Federal Policy in American Cities (with Harvard University Press), Hinton examines the implementation of federal law enforcement programs beginning in the mid-1960s that laid the groundwork for the mass incarceration of American citizens.