Stacey Borden is the  Founder and Executive Director of New Beginnings Reentry Services, Inc., which provides services to women coming home from prison. She talks about the unique experiences of women in prison and the challenges they face coming home.

Women Coming Home from Prison with Stacey Borden

Danielle Sered

Danielle Sered is the author of Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair. The book is based on her work as the founder and Director of Common Justice, an alternative-to-incarceration and victim-service program that focuses on violent felonies. We discuss violence, restorative justice, and the abject failure of the criminal legal system to do justice or create safety.

Violence & Restorative Justice with Danielle Sered

Julie Dahlstrom

Human trafficking happens here in the United States. More needs to be done to prevent and address it. At the same time, the law of human trafficking, although young, is actually quite robust. And it’s being applied in novel, complex, and (some would say) questionable ways. Julie Dahlstrom, Director of BU Law’s Immigrants’ Rights &amp; Human Trafficking Program, discusses these trends.

Law of Human Trafficking with Julie Dahlstrom

Sarah Seo

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 century. Namely, it vastly expanded police discretion, creating the law enforcement regime that has presided over numerous high profile killings of unarmed black drivers by police in recent years. We rethink that regime. Then, we take a turn to ask what the 20th century’s major technological disruption (cars) can teach us about how we in the 21st century can respond to new disruptive technologies like big data.

A Wrong Turn: How the Law of Cars Expanded Police Power with Sarah Seo

Robert Sampson

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 were 17 to 23 years old. Professor Robert Sampson outlines a groundbreaking new study showing the way that historical context predicts arrest rates.

The Birth Lottery of History with Robert Sampson

Matthew Clair

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, especially in the attorney-client relationship. In this conversation, we explore the attorney-client relationship in greater detail and the ways that it exacerbates inequality and legitimates injustice in the courts.

Attorney-Client Relationship as Locus of Inequality w/ Matthew Clair

Alec Karakatsanis

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 system and the dangers of criminal justice "reform."

The Criminal Injustice System with Alec Karakatsanis

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 and debt collection, corporate pollution, and/or unsafe rental conditions at least once in the past 10 years. The criminal legal system could intervene. Hear how from Jenny Montoya Tansey, PRP's Policy Director.

The Corporate Enforcement Gap with Jenny Montoya Tansey

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 police from undertaking tasks for which they are ill-equipped, especially those related to mental health crises, it does so effectively and without force/violence, and it does so far more cheaply. We invited Tim Black to learn more about CAHOOTS, how it got started, what they do and how they do it, and why this might be a critical option for other jurisdictions across the country that are trying to address public safety issues without such a heavy reliance on police.

The CAHOOTS Model

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 probation looks like, including in the context of the defund movement, as well as her experiences during her long career.

Progressive Probation with Wendy Still

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.

I’ve just begun listening and I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE this podcast!!

Student of the Law

Informative and interesting, cool guests, excellent host.

Great podcast!

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

Lisa Kavanaugh

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 convictions, bad forensic science (spoiler alert: there’s a lot), and the ways in which the plight of innocent defendants can highlight the injustices that all defendants face.

We Put Innocent People Behind Bars with Lisa Kavanaugh

Emily Baxter

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.weareallcriminals.org/

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 <a href="https://www.weareallcriminals.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.weareallcriminals.org/</a>

We Are All Criminals with Emily Baxter

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.

Public Defenders with Jonathan Rapping

Fania Davis

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 with a Ph.D. in indigenous knowledge. She is also the Founder of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth. We'll discuss the restorative justice framework and what it actually looks like on the ground.

Restorative Justice with Fania Davis

Alexandra Natapoff

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 understanding the criminal system in America. We discuss the misdemeanor system’s role as a system of social control, revenue generation, racial oppression, etc.–but certainly not as a system of justice.

Punishment Without Crime with Alexandra Natapoff

Anand Swaminathan

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 changing the criminal legal system.

Civil Litigation & Criminal Justice Reform with Anand Swaminathan

Beth McCann

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.

Progressive Prosecution with Beth McCann

Sara Zampierin

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 Staff Attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She will lay out for us an array of constitutionally and morally questionable practices that trap poor people in the criminal legal system, including excessive cash bail, onerous fines and fees, and self-interested private probation services.

Punished for Being Poor with Sara Zampierin

Brandon Garrett

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.

The Decline of the Death Penalty with Brandon Garrett

Nila Bala

Jesse Kelley

Nila Bala &amp; Jesse Kelley of the R Street Institute help us understand the juvenile justice system and talk about their work to reform the system.

Juvenile Justice with Nila Bala and Jesse Kelley

Norman Reimer

Elisa Klein

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 trial is so problematic with Norman Reimer, Executive Director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Elisa Klein, Associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher &amp; Flom.

The Trial Penalty with Norman Reimer & Elisa Klein

Steve Bishop

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 something basic, but powerful: less probation. Putting fewer young people on probation will free up probation resources to turn away from surveillance-based supervision to more constructive and therapeutic probation. We talk about that vision.

Transforming Juvenile Probation with Steve Bishop

Bianca Tylek

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 &amp; 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.

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 &amp; 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.

Making Money off of Caging People with Bianca Tylek

Allison McKim

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.

Gender, Punishment, and Social Control with Allison McKim

Donna Hubbard

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 Ambassadors International.

Bonus: Human Trafficking with Donna Hubbard

James Tager

Robert Pollock

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 and amplify the humanity of people in prison and the power of information. James Tager is the Deputy Director of Free Expression Research at PEN America and Robert Pollock is the Prison Writing Program Coordinator at PEN America.

The Biggest Book Ban in America with James Tager and Robert Pollock

Phil Torrey

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.

Crimmigration with Phil Torrey

Maya Buenaventura

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 practicing in the same court house. This week, we talk to Maya Buenaventura of the Rand Corporation about the Rand Corporation’s study of the holistic defense model and its implications for public defense as a whole.  Maya Buenaventura is an attorney and public policy researcher at the RAND Corporation.

Is Holistic Defense More Effective with Maya Buenaventura

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 Harvard Law students and recent alums whose work is helping to push criminal law scholarship forward.First, Anneke Dunbar Gronke talks about her recent piece in the Harvard Law Review on Commonwealth v. Brangan, a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case advancing bail reform. Then, Ben Gifford discusses how and why prison crime has been excluded from economic cost-benefit analyses of incarceration.

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 Harvard Law students and recent alums whose work is helping to push criminal law scholarship forward. First, Anneke Dunbar Gronke talks about her recent piece in the Harvard Law Review on Commonwealth v. Brangan, a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case advancing bail reform. Then, Ben Gifford discusses how and why prison crime has been excluded from economic cost-benefit analyses of incarceration.

Student Scholarship--Bail & the Cost/Benefit of Incarceration

Rahsaan Hall

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 public awareness.

What a Difference a DA Makes with Rahsaan Hall

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