DISMANTLING MASS INCARCERATION | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation

In recent years, a searching national conversation has called attention to the social and racial injustices that define America’s criminal system. But despite growing movements for change, the vast machinery of the carceral state remains very much intact. How can its damage and depredations be undone?

In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates—Premal Dharia, James Forman Jr., and Maria Hawilo—provide us with tools to move from despair and critique to hope and action. DISMANTLING MASS INCARCERATION surveys various approaches to confronting the carceral state, exploring bold but practical interventions involving police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, prisons, and even life after Pr*son. Rather than prescribing solutions, the book offers a forum for discussions—and disagreements—about how to best confront the harms of mass incarceration. The contributors range from noted figures such as Angela Y. Davis, Clint Smith, and Larry Krasner to local organizers, advocates, scholars, lawyers, and judges, as well as people who have been incarcerated. The result is an invaluable guide for anyone who wishes to understand mass incarceration—and hasten its end.

Editors Premal Dharia and James Forman Jr. are joining us on the Busboys stage alongside Blume Professor of Law and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown Law, Kris Henning, to share about their research on the wide range of perspectives on how we should solve this crisis. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Dharia and Forman will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of DISMANTLING MASS INCARCERATION will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed. 

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Premal Dharia is the executive director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration at Harvard Law School and is coeditor in chief of Inquest. She has written for The Washington Post, CNN, Slate and other publications.

James Forman, Jr. is a professor of law at Yale Law School. He has written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, numerous law reviews, and other publications. A former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, he spent six years as a public defender in Washington, D.C., where he cofounded the Maya Angelou Public Charter School. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning Locking Up Our Own and a co-editor of Dismantling Mass Incarceration.

Kris Henning is the Blume Professor of Law and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown Law, where she supervises law students and represents youth accused of delinquency in the D.C. Superior Court. Henning served as the Law School’s Associate Dean for Clinics and Experiential Learning from 2017-2020. She writes extensively about race, adolescence, and policing, and her book, The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth, was published by Penguin Random House in September 2021.

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