Voir Dire: Conversations from the Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management

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 about the gargantuan project that touches just about every corner of the criminal legal system.

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 criminal justice system. Our guest this week, Allison McKim examines two rehab facilities for women--one for women referred by the criminal justice system and one for private payers--and finds fascinating and problematic differences between the two. Her work and our conversation explores the intersection of punishment, gender, and social control in the criminal legal system.

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 of crimes, but they're also helping to take down the money bail system as we know it in this country. This week, I talk to Pilar Weiss, the Project Director of the National Bail Fund Network, about her work and this movement.

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 immigration and criminal legal systems. Phil Torrey, Managing Attorney of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, a Lecturer on Law, and the Supervising Attorney for the Harvard Immigration Project, will be our guide.

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.

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.

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.

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, tells us about her involvement with the project and discusses rehabilitation and the Second Amendment for communities of color.

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 operates private prisons and detention centers. So millions of Americans are unknowingly invested in Core Civic through Vanguard’s extremely popular retirement accounts and mutual fund products.

But private prison companies are only the tip of a much larger iceberg. Prisons and prison services are being commercialized at alarming rates.

Bianca Tylek, our guest this week & the Founder of the Corrections Accountability Project, invites us not only to decide how we want our money to be invested, but more importantly to ask whether or not we’re ok with some people profiting off of the caging of others.

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 and frisk by the police.