Podcasts by Voir Dire: Conversations from the Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management
Voir Dire is an interview-based podcast about criminal justice reform. Sometimes, we share the conversations taking place on Harvard’s campus; other times, we start conversations outside of those small classrooms. Working or living in the criminal legal system can habituate you to the cruelty and wastefulness of the whole thing. In this podcast, we try to contextualize these systems, pick the brains of the most thoughtful people in criminal justice reform, and think big about how to ameliorate the mass incarceration crisis. Hosted by Schuyler Daum.
Further podcasts by HLS Criminal Justice Policy Program
Podcast on the topic Regierung
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A Wrong Turn: How the Law of Cars Expanded Police Power with Sarah Seo from 2022-01-24T10:00:24
Sarah Seo is the author of Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom. She explains how traffic enforcement fundamentally changed Fourth Amendment jurisprudence in the 20th centu...
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The Birth Lottery of History with Robert Sampson from 2021-12-09T09:00:22
People with similar demographics, individual characteristics, and family and economic backgrounds have substantially different chances of getting arrested depending on the years during which they w...
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Attorney-Client Relationship as Locus of Inequality w/ Matthew Clair from 2021-09-27T08:59:59
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, ...
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The Criminal Injustice System with Alec Karakatsanis from 2021-08-12T09:00:16
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...
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The Corporate Enforcement Gap with Jenny Montoya Tansey from 2021-06-28T08:30:09
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 a...
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The CAHOOTS Model from 2021-06-01T22:20:07
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 po...
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Progressive Probation with Wendy Still from 2021-04-26T08:00:11
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...
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The Anti Police-Terror Project with Cat Brooks from 2021-03-29T08:29:59
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.
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Popular Demand: Big Data Policing with Andrew Ferguson from 2020-07-09T14:13:36
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 crim...
Popular Demand: Public Defenders with Jonathan Rapping from 2020-07-09T14:10:59
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 fo...
Popular Demand: Restorative Justice with Fania Davis from 2020-07-09T14:07:52
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 p...
Popular Demand: The Psychological Traumas of Leaving Prison with Wesley Caines from 2020-07-09T14:05:23
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 rele...
Mental Illness & the Criminal System with Alisa Roth from 2019-10-24T20:49:36
We discuss mental illness and the criminal system with Alisa Roth, author of Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness.
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Mental Illness & the Criminal System from 2019-10-24T20:49:36
We discuss mental illness and the criminal system with Alisa Roth, author of Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness.
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Punishment Without Crime with Alexandra Natapoff from 2019-06-28T20:19:24
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 un...
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We Are All Criminals with Emily Baxter from 2019-05-14T08:30:09
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.weareall...
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The Biggest Book Ban in America with James Tager and Robert Pollock from 2019-04-15T18:08:29
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 ...
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Civil Litigation & Criminal Justice Reform with Anand Swaminathan from 2019-03-19T07:00:09
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 ...
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Is Holistic Defense More Effective with Maya Buenaventura from 2019-02-26T10:00:06
Holistic defenders in the Bronx saved their clients 1.1 million days of incarceration and saved taxpayers $165 million on housing costs alone, relative to the traditional public defenders practicin...
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People in Prison Are Getting Older with Darnell and Darryl Epps from 2019-02-10T00:31:28
By 2030, 1 in 3 people in prison will be 55 or older. We’ll discuss reform to address this trend and what the response to this trend tells us about the role of rehabilitation in the system.
Dar...
Who Counts as a Victim with Alysia Santo from 2019-01-22T14:06:38
States provide money to people who have been victims of crime to reimburse them for the costs of their victimization—things like therapy, funerals, etc. But Alysia Santo, an investigative reporter ...
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The Injustice of Sex Offense Registries with Emily Horowitz from 2019-01-09T09:00:15
We discuss the need to abolish sex offense registries with Emily Horowitz, a professor of sociology & criminal justice and the author of Protecting Our Kids? How Sex Offender Laws Are Failing Us Op...
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Police Violence against Women of Color with Andrea Ritchie from 2018-12-13T03:21:38
Andrea Ritchie is an attorney, organizer, and author of Invisible No More, a recent book about how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, a...
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What a Difference a DA Makes with Rahsaan Hall from 2018-11-21T03:19:53
Rahsaan Hall is the Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts’s What A Difference a DA Makes Campaign. We discuss progressive prosecution and the ACLU’s campaign to hold prosecutors accountable through...
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The Trial Penalty with Norman Reimer & Elisa Klein from 2018-11-08T07:00:08
Trials are supposed to be a fundamental constitutional right. But in today’s criminal legal system, only 3% of federal cases are resolved at trial. I discuss why the endangerment of the American tr...
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Transforming Juvenile Probation with Steve Bishop from 2018-10-24T00:23:29
383,000 young people were placed on formal or informal probation supervision in 2014. Stephen Bishop, of the Annie E Casey Foundation, thinks that supervision needs to look different. He argues som...
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Legalizing Cannabis with Shaleen Title from 2018-10-09T22:25:01
The criminalization of cannabis was a foundational pillar of the New Jim Crow. Now, the decriminalization of cannabis might just make a small number of white and privileged folks really rich. Shale...
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Holistic Defense @ Arch City Defenders with Blake Strode from 2018-09-26T00:45:46
Arch City Defenders advocates for poor people and people of color who are exploited by the municipal court system in St. Louis. Its Director, Blake Strode, will discuss their aggressively holistic ...
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Paying to Avoid a Shoplifting Charge with John Rappaport from 2018-09-11T22:07:54
People caught shoplifting can pay $400-$500 to a private company in return for a promise not to call the police and a "restorative justice" class. What?? We discuss the pros and cons of such privat...
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A Progressive DA Campaign w/ Boston Candidate Shannon McAuliffe from 2018-08-30T14:18:04
Boston's Sept. 4 District Attorney elections for have the potential to change the criminal legal system in Boston and be a model for progressive change across the country. Shannon McAuliffe is runn...
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Student Scholarship: Solitary Confinement w/ Mental Illness + Cause Lawyer Civil Disobedience from 2018-08-21T14:50:25
This is the second episode in which we feature student scholarship coming out of HLS. We interview Andrew Hanna about a recent Third Circuit case that could change the landscape of putting people w...
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Student Scholarship--Bail & the Cost/Benefit of Incarceration from 2018-07-16T15:50:11
We reached out to all the criminal law professors at HLS and asked what student scholarship had really wowed them in the past year. In these special episodes, we bring you conversations with the Ha...
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Restorative Justice with Fania Davis from 2018-05-16T23:08:29
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...
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The Decline of the Death Penalty with Brandon Garrett from 2018-05-01T06:29:34
Brandon Garrett discusses the precipitous decline in death penalty sentences and executions and his new book, End of its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice.
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Bonus: Human Trafficking with Donna Hubbard from 2018-04-17T02:26:17
Pastor Donna Hubbard works with women who have been trafficked at her organization, the Women at the Well Transition Center, and helps train airline attendants to spot trafficking with Airline Amba...
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Life Sentence on the Outside with Donna Hubbard and Carl Route from 2018-04-17T02:21:58
Carl Route describes life after prison as “the life sentence on the outside.” We explore the difficulties of life after prison with activists and reformers Donna Hubbard and Carl Route and discuss...
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Juvenile Justice with Nila Bala and Jesse Kelley from 2018-04-03T02:06:01
Nila Bala & Jesse Kelley of the R Street Institute help us understand the juvenile justice system and talk about their work to reform the system.
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Bonus: The Conservative Case for Criminal Justice Reform w/ Nila Bala & Jesse Kelley from 2018-04-03T02:01:07
Nila Balan & Jesse Kelley of the free market think tank, the R Street Institute, talk about a conservative perspective on criminal justice reform.
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Closing Rikers with Elizabeth Glazer from 2018-03-20T02:31:31
Mayor Bill de Blasio has committed to close Rikers Island, NYC's primary jail. But how exactly do you do that? Elizabeth Glazer, Director of the NYC Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, talks to us ...
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Gender, Punishment, and Social Control with Allison McKim from 2018-03-05T23:00:04
Women are the fastest growing population in US prisons and jails. At the same time, drug courts are proliferating and new emphasis is being placed on the potential rehabilitative functions of the c...
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Community Bail Funds with Pilar Weiss from 2018-02-19T14:52:21
Community bail funds pool community resources to pay the bail of people who can't afford to post bail while awaiting trial. They make an important impact in the individual lives of people accused o...
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Crimmigration with Phil Torrey from 2018-02-06T04:04:38
In this episode, we look again at the collateral consequences of involvement with the criminal legal system. "Crimmigration" is the complex field of law that deals with the intersection of the immi...
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Public Defenders with Jonathan Rapping from 2018-01-24T00:40:59
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 pub...
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The Rise of Big Data Policing with Andrew Ferguson from 2017-12-13T16:55:33
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 w...
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Progressive Prosecution with Beth McCann from 2017-11-28T16:02:12
Beth McCann, the newly elected District Attorney of Denver talks to us about her work, what it means to be a progressive prosecutor, and the role of prosecutors as reformers.
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Bonus Episode: The Sing Sing Gun Buyback with Bianca Tylek from 2017-11-20T03:51:22
A small group of men at Sing Sing Correctional Facility fundraised nearly $8,000 from other men in the facility for a gun buyback. Bianca Tylek, founder of the Corrections Accountability Project, t...
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Making Money off of Caging People with Bianca Tylek from 2017-11-14T04:17:12
Have you ever thought about what it means to make money off of caging other people? You should. Vanguard owns 19% of Core Civic, a company with $1.7 billion in revenue that owns, manages, and opera...
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What Happens to Your Kids When You're Arrested? with Emma Ketteringham from 2017-10-31T01:50:16
Emma Ketteringham, Managing Director of the Family Defense Practice at the Bronx Defenders, tells us how her clients fear the knock of of a child protective services case worker far more than stop ...
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Punished for Being Poor with Sara Zampierin from 2017-10-25T03:31:11
Debtors prisons were banned in the US in the 1830's. But almost two centuries later, the criminal legal system is still punishing people for being poor. This week, we talk to Sara Zampierin, a Staf...
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Sexual Violence in Prison with Dave Rini from 2017-10-04T22:12:53
Sexual assault is widespread in prison. And sometimes it may feel like nobody cares. But our guest, Dave Rini, runs a collaboration between the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center and the Massachusetts ...
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We Put Innocent People Behind Bars with Lisa Kavanaugh from 2017-10-04T22:07:20
It’s an ugly truth: our criminal legal system sends innocent people to prison. We talk to Lisa Kavanaugh, Director of the Committee for Public Counsel’s Innocence Program, about wrongful conviction...
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The Psychological Traumas of Leaving Prison with Wesley Caines from 2017-10-04T22:05:54
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 t...
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Welcome to Voir Dire from 2017-10-04T21:35:09
What is Voir Dire? And what can you expect from this podcast?
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