FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Media Contact:
Camille Bridges
PABW President
(617) 872-6090
cbridges@princeton.edu

Scholars examine U.S. prison system during "Locked Up and Locked Out" colloquium at Princeton A series of panels titled "Locked Up and Locked Out" will examine the state of the American prison system on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 10-11, at McCosh Hall on the Princeton University campus. The 2007 Princeton Prison Colloquium will feature Princeton faculty, including Professor of Religion Cornel West, government officials and leading thinkers on the subject of crime and punishment.

Various Princeton University student groups have joined to organize the colloquium, which is free and open to the public without registration.

"The aim of this event is to promote an in-depth dialogue around the issue of incarceration and to thoroughly explore the choices we make about our prison system," said Camille Bridges, a sophomore at Princeton and President of the Princeton Association of Black Women, one of the organizing groups. "The U.S. currently has 2 million people behind bars. The panels will explore some important and often unexpressed questions about how these prisoners pay their debt to society."

The colloquium will begin at 4 p.m. on April 10 with a panel on prisoners and civil liberties. Speakers will include Devon Brown, Director of the Washington, D.C. Department of Corrections, Lydell B. Sherrer, Administrator of Northern State Prison, and Kenneth Green, Director of the Office of Employee Relations at the New Jersey Department of Corrections. A second panel titled "The Problem of Prison Reentry" will follow at 6 p.m. and will feature Devah Pager, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton, Douglas E. Thompkins, Assistant Professor of Sociology at CUNY, and Sam Williams, Program Director of the prisoner reentry program United Souls.

Panels will continue at 4 p.m. on April 11 with a "Conversation on Immigration Detention" between Patricia Fernández-Kelly, a senior lecturer in Princeton's Department of Sociology, Sharon Nyantekyi, a former immigration detainee and now an immigrants’ rights activist, and William Westerman, a lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program. A concluding panel at 7 p.m. will examine the impact of incarceration on greater society. The discussion will feature West; John Borneman, Princeton Professor of Anthropology; John Darley, Princeton Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs; and Celeste Fitzgerald, Program Director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

All panels will be held in McCosh 50. A reception will follow the April 10th panel in Frist Campus Center, Room 307, and on April 11th another reception will be held in Rocky Common Room.

The colloquium is being sponsored by the following Princeton University organizations: Princeton Association of Black Women, the Community-Based Learning Initiative, the Princeton NAACP College Chapter, the University Center for Human Values, the Black Men's Awareness Group, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, the Undergraduate Student Government, John D. Rockefeller III College, and the Carl A. Fields Center.

For more information on the colloquium, please contact the event coordinator, Camille Bridges, at cbridges@princeton.edu.

Members of the news media who plan to attend the panel(s) must contact Bridges no later than noon Monday, April 9, at cbridges@princeton.edu or (617) 872-6090.