Postyour mini-lecture by uploading the recording. In addition to your mini-lecture, write
a
200- to 300-wordpost in which you:
Explain how future trends in higher education may shape your chosen topic or presentation of that topic.
Explain how trends in human services may change your chosen topic or presentation of that topic.
RESOURCES
Required Resources: Open Education Resources
One trend in higher education is the movement toward open education resources. These resources are free to use, edit, and distribute.
Wang, T., & Towey, D. (2017, December 1217).
Open educational resource (OER) adoption in higher education: Challenges and strategiesLinks to an external site.
[Conference presentation].
2017 IEEE 6th International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering, Hong Kong, 317319. https://doi.org/10.1109/TALE.2017.8252355
Open Education Global. (2019, March 7).
OEWeek 2019 CCCOER faculty dialogue: Philosophy
Links to an external site.
[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzPeu2a9waI
Required Resources: Higher Education Post COVID-19
The rush to move all education online following the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic changed higher education.
Craig, R. (2020, July 24).
The great unbundling of higher education starts nowLinks to an external site.
. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancraig/2020/07/24/the-great-unbundling-of-higher-education-starts-now/#237f0a856ed2
Coursera. (2020, April 24).
The new reality and impact of COVID-19 on higher education panel
Links to an external site.
[2020 Coursera Virtual Conference] [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnsNYNaZsaI
Required Resources: Future of Human Services
These resources preview some of the trends in human services, which you can use to inform your Discussion.
Goddard, T., Myers, R. R., & Robison, K. J. (2015).
Potential partnerships: Progressive criminology, grassroots organizations and social justice
Links to an external site.
.International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 4(4), 7690. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v4i4.231
Pollack, D. (2019).
The 2020 census: Concerns about undercounting and the effects on human services
Links to an external site.
.Policy and Practice, 77(1), 2526.
Mor Barak, M. E. (2019).
Social good science and practice: A new framework for organizational and managerial research in human service organizations
Links to an external site.
.Human Services Organizations: Management, Leadership and Governance, 43(4), 314325. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2019.1669759 www.crimejusticejournal.com IJCJ&SD 2015 4(4): 7690 ISSN 22028005
The Author(s) 2015
Potential Partnerships: Progressive Criminology,
Grassroots Organizations and Social Justice
Tim Goddard
Florida International University, USA
Randolph R Myers
Old Dominion University, USA
Kaitlyn J Robison
Old Dominion University, USA
Abstract
Criminologists around the globe are writing about the disproportionate criminalization of
minority groups and in the US in particular about racial disproportionality in all aspects of
the criminal justice system. This wealth of knowledge in progressive criminology rarely
animates reform efforts: it has had little impact on formal policymaking, and has failed to
animate the work of grassroots activists engaged in the fight for justice system reform. Yet
given the increased criminalization of young people in poor communities and the
possibilities for change at this very moment progressive criminological ideas have never
been more important. We need to think about ways to make them public. Toward this end,
this paper discusses possible partnerships between progressive criminology and social
justice organizations struggling to transform the criminal justice system. While describing
nine such groups, we detail a set of recommendations for bridging the gap between
progressive criminology and social justice organizations.
Keywords
Social justice; progressive criminology; communitybased grassroots organizations; protests;
criminology activism.
Protests and activist criminology
In late 2014, a national conversation in the US developed around police violence, racial
disproportionality in incarceration, and the racialized consequences of mass incarceration and
people have taken to the streets demanding change. Ignited by specific acts of police violence
towards young people of color, protests erupted in several US cities, including New York, St
Louis, and Los Angeles and, most recently, in Baltimore, Maryland, where the death of 25year
old Freddie Gray from spinal injuries sustained while in police custody ignited widespread
protests across the city. The protests, sitins, dieins, and the like are demanding reform of the
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US criminal justice system and reintroducing calls to eradicate various social inequalities and
upend institutionalized racism. As these events unfold, people around the world are not only
learning more about the social and human consequences of the US criminal justice system but
also recognizing similar disparities (and countermovements) in their own countries (Palet
2015).
Although most major media outlets framed the US protests as sudden, years of activism by
communitybased organizations and coalitions helped lay the groundwork for them.
Progressive and critical criminologists need to better understand these organizations, in part
because they provide a way to engage with todays possibilities for change. While notable
exceptions exist, for the most part, the ideas of progressive criminology rarely influence the
policymaking process and rarely, if ever, do activists draw on progressive criminology or work
directly with progressive criminologists. In her 2014 Presidential Address to the American
Society of Criminology, Joanne Belknap spoke to the consequences of our sitting on the
sidelines:
If criminologists are unwilling to become more committed to activism and
dedicated to changing these practices and policies, we can expect continuing and
alarming ineffectiveness in deterring offending and incarceration. Indeed, we can
expect a backfiring of our stated efforts and, in short, we are falling down on the
job. (Belknap 2015: 2)
We find this and similar arguments compelling (see also Currie 2007; Uggen and Inderbitzin
2010). And we see working more closely with social justice organizations which are protesting
the same subjects many of us teach and write about as one way for progressive criminology to
engage with the important changes that need to be made. In this article we describe the
programs and organizing efforts of nine social justice organizations working to bring
consciousness to these issues, often by mobilizing young people to become advocates for
changing this system as well as designing and implementing less harmful alternatives to justice
as usual for young people in the US. We highlight the many intersections with critical and
progressive criminology and detail specific ways that criminologists with progressive values
might align themselves with likeminded folks pursuing social justice in the community.
Racial disparities in the US criminal justice system: A review of the injustices
Before describing the sample of social justice organizations, we review the injustices they are
working to eliminate. As is well known, the US leads the world in incarceration. The US
correctional system houses 2.4 million inmates on any given day, a population that is roughly
the size of the fifth largest US city, Houston, Texas. When you add the number of people on
probation and parole to those behind bars, the US correctional population stands at roughly 7
million (Glaze and Kaeble 2014). At just over 700 per 100,000, the US rate of imprisonment is
roughly 4.5 times that of England and Wales and 5.5 times that of Australia (Walmsley 2013).
However, this does not suggest that these countries criminal justice systems are raceneutral,
an issue we touch on below.
The swelling of the US system over the last 40 years is due, almost entirely, to an increased rate
of incarceration for people of color, mainly for drugrelated offenses (Alexander 2010). For
young men of color with little education, the prison has become a normal social experience,
statistically speaking (Western 2006). Mass incarceration appears to be with us for years to
come as well: while the US prison population recently experienced a slight downtick, estimates
suggest that the US carceral system will be larger in 2018 than today (The Pew Charitable
Trusts 2014). This means that, for the foreseeable future, a prison term will serve as a common
rite of passage for poor young men of color (Comfort 2012), an experience that forever dims
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their life prospects and curtails those of their neighbors, partners, brothers, sisters and children,
perhaps for generations to come (Clear 2007; Wakefield and Wildeman 2011).
Research on US policing practices helps us understand why so many young men of color are
under US correctional control and why communities of color are protesting so vehemently
against them. As a direct consequence of the policies and practices of the US War on Drugs,
young Black males are disproportionately targeted, arrested, and prosecuted for drug offenses
(Alexander 2010; Provine 2011; Western 2006) even though Black youth are less likely than
White youth to use drugs and alcohol illegally (Felson and Kreager 2015). In addition to this,
research on racial profiling and the practice of stop, question, and frisk shows that police
disproportionately stop Black people, frisk them more, and use force against them more often
(Tonry 2011). Still, if the arrests are more productive at finding guns or drugs, then maybe this
suggests that racial profiling is at least functionally appropriate. The opposite is the case,
however: Blacks are less likely to possess guns or drugs than Whites when stopped (Tonry
2011). Alarmingly, we are learning more and more about the psychological consequences of this
racialized policing: the more police stops an individual endures, the more trauma and anxiety
symptoms experienced by that person (Geller, Fagan, Tyler and Link 2014). In addition to being
stopped more often, in many communities, police encounters are more violent for black people
than for Whites and other racial groups as police shoot and kill a disproportionate number of
ethnic and racial minorities (Department of Justice 2015).
The disparities do not end with police practices. Once arrested, prosecutors are less likely to
grant people of color pretrial diversion, counseling or programming than Whites with similar
legal characteristics (Schlesinger 2013). This matters because pretrial diversion channels
criminal defendants out of the criminallegal net and away from the stigma of a criminal record
(Pager 2007). The disparities do not end there, however. Once charged, Blacks are more likely
to be punished than Whites. Particularly among men convicted of drug crimes but also among
men convicted of property crimes mandatory terms and sentencing enhancements
disproportionately increase Black mens prison sentences (Schlesinger 2011). Even after
controlling for past criminal record and other pertinent variables, the chances of a severe legal
sanction remain 42 per cent higher for a Black defendant (Stolzenberg, DAlessio and Eitle
2013). The same disparities can be seen with youth. For instance, a recent study found that,
irrespective of the selfreported delinquency, Black youth were more likely to be placed in a
correctional institution than White youth (Stevens and Morash 2015).
Compounding these disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice systems is the fact that
criminal justice tools and logics guide school discipline practices in the US (Simon 2007). The
use of surveillance, partnerships with law enforcement, and implementation of zero
tolerance policies illustrates the pervasiveness of this model (Hirschfield 2008), one that
directly and indirectly places students at increased risk for incarceration. The consequences
under zerotolerance schemes can include immediate police intervention as well as
mandatory suspensions or expulsions (Hirschfield 2008; Simon 2007). Racial disparities in
who enters the schooltoprison pipeline echo those of the prison system: students of color are
suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than White students (US Department of
Education Office for Civil Rights 2014).
The punitive turn has occurred in the context of worsening social and economic inequalities and
the dismantlement of state supports under neoliberalism (Massey 2007; Soss, Fording and
Schram 2011). Youth employment rates in the US have steadily fallen over the last fifty years,
reaching their lowest level since World War II in 2011 (Smith et al. 2012). While a universal
decline in youth employment is occurring in the US, innercity communities are facing a job
shortage crisis, with one out of four Black and one out of six Latino workingage youth
unemployed (Jones 2014). The work that is available in the postindustrial US labor market is
often shortterm and precarious in nature, especially for young people who lack a college degree
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(Smith et al. 2012; Standing 2011). Moreover, even these precarious jobs are becoming more
competitive: more qualified older workers increasingly beat out younger, lessskilled workers
for the entrylevel service jobs that once served as an entry point to the US labor market (Smith
et al. 2012). While some public job training programs for vulnerable young people exist (Harris
and Bird 2012), the US lags behind other countries in providing job training and employment
programs to young people disconnected from the labor market (Currie 2013a).
The lack of familyfriendly policies intensifies the consequences of this shortage of stable,
rewarding and meaningful work in the US. The US is one of the few countries that does not
require employers to guarantee paid maternity leave, nor must employers allow workers to
adjust their working hours around their families (Lovell 2007). In total, 22 million working
women do not have paid sick days (Lovell 2007). In these situations, a working mother must
choose between her health (or that of her child) and her job. In the event that a parent must
choose work, ideally, other mechanisms of support and supervision would be in place to care for
their children, such as afterschool programs. This is not always the case, especially in poor
communities. While after school programs serving privileged communities can rely on the fees
collected from participants, those in poor communities cannot, and these organizations must
invest much time and effort fighting for limited funds from a wide variety of public and private
sources (Gardner, Roth and BrooksGunn 2009). The fractured social ecology of support in the
US changes what it means to draw a small wage, compounding the stresses and strains
associated with lowwage work in ways that matter for violence (Currie 2013a).
Mass incarceration worsens these already troubling inequalities, many of which are gendered.
For the increasing number of women disproportionately women of color who experience the
US prison system, this criminalization often disqualifies them from accessing public services
such as public housing, a collateral consequence that further exposes women to the gendered
violence that occurs at alarming rates in marginalized US communities (Richie 2012). Although
some recent policy attention has focused on improving and expanding services to incarcerated
women, many of these gender specific services during and after incarceration are narrow
individualized interventions grounded in behavioristpsychology, which fail to grapple with the
material deprivations women in crime so often face (Myers 2013; Sered and Norton Hawk
2014). While research shows that wellplanned and coordinated service provisions can make a
real difference for women returning home from prison (Belknap 2014), recent qualitative work
reveals how the reality of governmental support for reentering women is often made up of
stingy, shortterm and contingent variants of support: stopgap measures which do little to help
women stay sober, keep custody of their children, and stay out of the criminal legal system
(Sered and NortonHawk 2014). It is poor women of color who are disproportionality exposed
to this selfdefeating system (Richie 2012), meaning that the gendered ripple effects of
inadequate services for returning women will disproportionately affect their families and their
communities for years and decades to come.
More generally, mass incarceration means that the human capital of young people born into
poor communities of color goes underdeveloped: due to the physical separation that comes with
a prison stay, and the ways in which a prison record cutsoff the life chances of adults who
might otherwise play active roles in childrens lives, mass incarceration makes for fewer adults
capable of bringing out the latent skills, talents and aptitudes of children born into carceral hot
spots (Clear 2007). Incarceration lowers the levels of social capital for all young people living in
hot spots of incarceration, as exprisoners who cannot participate fully in social and economic
life now dot their social networks (Alexander 2010; Clear 2007). Moreover, the majority of the
men and women cycling through the US prison system are parents (Mumola 2000). For the
approximately three million children with a parent in prison, this experience truncates their life
chances in subtle and not so subtle ways (Travis, Western and Redburn 2014; Wakefield and
Wildeman 2011). Because its effects stretch across multiple social institutions, compounding
and exacerbating other social ills, the US prison system now stands beside the labor market and
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the education system as an important stratifying institution in US society (Wakefield and Uggen
2010).
Ending mass incarceration and its racial disparities
Clearly, significant social and criminal justice system changes are necessary, and the scholarship
outlined above highlights the patterned nature of these problems. This scholarship, however,
has not been enough to activate significant changes: historically it is grassroots activism that is
needed (Alexander 2010; Gilmore 2007). At this moment, in many urban US cities, activism and
mobilization is taking place; unfortunately, this activism lacks support from the knowledge that
we have found in our own research (Belknap 2015: 4). This does not seem like a good thing.
Grassroots social justice organizations working in communities most affected by these issues
have designed original and historically informed ways to combat the causes and consequences
of mass incarceration. The policy changes advocated for by these organizations are more wide
ranging than the technical solutions put forward by much of administrative criminology, and the
programs they are implementing more ambitious than the individualized focus of most what
works interventions. These organizations advocate for the sort of broader policy changes and
creative interventions progressive and critical criminologists also advocate for, including not
just different and better social control policies, but less criminalization. But despite being in
operation for a decade or more, their presence has gone largely unnoticed by progressive
criminologists. To correct this oversight and remediate this lack of engagement, in what follows,
we provide descriptions of nine organizations in three different categories, while offering
specific ideas about how progressive criminologists might learn from and partner with these
groups.
Activist social justice organizations
One variety of social justice organization works to builds social movements against toughon
crime practices. Organizations of this kind campaign against a wide range of policies, including:
the presence of police in schools; the lack of due process for youth placed on gang watch lists;
and the construction of new jails. Some organizations hold rallies in favor of justice
reinvestment and immigration reform, with the youth doing the campaign work in many of
these organizations. While some activist organizations partner with the state or philanthropies
to deliver various services to youth, advocacy and organizing work is at the core of what they
do.
Sistas and Brothas United
Founded in the late 1990s, Sistas and Brothas Uniteds mission is to empower youth from low
and moderateincome communities in the Northwest Bronx area of New York. Sistas and
Brothas United (SBU) focuses on educational justice, employment opportunities, and increasing
the availability of communitybased resources. It offers leadership training where youth learn to
plan meetings, speak at public events, and interact with public officials. In a joint campaign with
the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, Sistas and Brothas United succeeded in
reducing overcrowding, increasing community engagement, and modifying zerotolerance
policies in local schools. By holding politicians accountable for things such as deteriorating
school conditions, members of SBU send a powerful message about the dangers of investing in
incarceration and police surveillance instead of education.
Families and Friends of Louisianas Incarcerated Children
The New Orleansbased Families and Friends of Louisianas Incarcerated Youth (FFLIC)
emerged in 2000 in response to the growing outrage and fear of parents with children in the
juvenile justice system. FFLIC members include youth with experience in the juvenile justice
system and their families who fight for juvenile justice reform and the promotion of more
nurturing and rehabilitative practices. FFLIC also strives to give parents a voice in the juvenile
justice process, working at both the local level by engaging in education, community building,
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and leadership development as well as leading statewide campaigns for reform. In recent years,
FFLIC helped push through the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2003, led the charge against
closing the Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth, and lobbied for a reevaluation of state
statutes on school discipline.
Youth Justice Coalition
Founded in Los Angeles in 2003, the Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) works to end race, class, and
gender inequality throughout Californias juvenile justice system. It brings together youth,
family, and exoffenders to fight against racial profiling, police brutality, violation of rights, and
the school to prison pipeline. Some of the youth have been incarcerated in locked juvenile
facilities or on formal probation, while others have been pushed out of mainstream schools or
had a parent in the justice system. Through its work, YJC won a moratorium on Los Angeles
county probations practice of charging families up to $25 a day during their childs stay in
juvenile hall/camp, and won opportunities for education, registration, and absentee voting from
within the walls of the Los Angeles County juvenile halls and youth prison facilities. It also
worked with the Dignity in Schools campaign, and has reduced youth detention and
incarceration in Los Angeles by 50 per cent.
While we detail only three organizations here, many more organizations like this exist in the
USA: for example, School of Unity and Liberation (Oakland, California), Seattle Community
Justice Program (Seattle, Washington), SouthWest Organizing Project (Albuquerque, New
Mexico), Bostonarea Youth Organizing Project (Boston), Teen Empowerment (Boston),
DRUMSouth Asian Organizing Center (New York), FIERCE (New York), YaYa Network (New
York), Youth Ministries for Peace & Justice (New York), Southern Echo (Jackson, Mississippi),
and Project SouthInstitute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide (Atlanta, Georgia).
Organizations of this kind work to harness the energies and anger that many young people feel
towards the US criminal legal system (and mainstream American institutions generally). If un
harnessed, this energy is likely to dissolve. Alternatively, it could metastasize: this discontent
and resentment could morph from civil disobedience and peaceful protest into outright
violence, aimed at police or other citizens. Thinking beyond the current protests in St Louis,
New York and other cities, in the longer term, these sorts of organizations are important
because they build a generation of young leaders, who come from communities most affected by
issues of crime and punishment.
By casting light on how criminal justice furthers racial injustice, documenting the impact of
criminalization and mass incarceration on youth of color and their communities, and
establishing responses to crime and delinquency outside of the carceral state, activist social
justice organizations work for just the sort of changes that progressive criminologists write and
teach about. Of course, there is variation in philosophy and focus. Similar to the spectrum of
politics in critical and progressive criminology, these organizations range from leftliberal to
radical in their approach: that is, some focus on reform and brokering with the state, while
others look to build communitybased responses outside of the state and untethered from elite
philanthropies. Regardless, these organizations put into practice many of the values that
progressive and radical scholars care about.
Progressive criminology excels at uncovering social harm but rarely works to redress social
injustice (Uggen and Inderbitzin 2010). How then might critical and progressive scholars
partner with these organizations? As others have suggested, scholars should conduct research
alongside communitybased groups or do servicelearning projects (Aminzade 2004). Both
methods appear ripe for expanding the (much needed) public criminology agenda. A more
immediate way to align with these groups would be to distill and disseminate cutting edge
research. However, scholars must ask what new empirical support would benefit a local
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organization and not assume we know what they need. Related to this, this translation of
research should not be thought of as guiding or educating organizations and communities, but
supportive of their communityled actions. Organizations not only organize campaign plans and
strategies, but also conduct their own research, publish reports, and teach about historical and
contemporary injustices and popular mobilizations against them. Organizations and activists do
not require lessons from us, but some might benefit from additional empirical support to
augment their own knowledge base and contextualize their personal and professional
experiences. The website of one organization illustrates well our note of caution:
Most research is conducted from the protection and isolation of a university
tower, science laboratory, or corporate boardroom. Real Search takes those of us
in the community out from under the microscope. Beyond the role of storyteller,
we are claiming our rights as researchers, analysts, problem solvers, and the
architects of programs and public policy. (Youth Justice Coalition 2015)
Thus, in working with these groups, the goal must not be to replace their knowledge with our
own: instead, we recommend that we allow organizations to integrate our reviews with their
own knowledge, experiences, and solutions. Moreover, much can be learned by criminologists
from them, not just as research participants, but as experts in the field working on the front
lines. Their solutions, however big or small, are tested and being tested and they are putting
themselves on the line, and this must be respected. Our involvement, whatever form it takes,
must not reproduce structural inequalities or colonize knowledge production.
Program and service delivery social justice organizations
Another variety of social justice organization works to prevent youth and gang violence from
occurring, intervenes on harmful behavior, and reintegrates young offenders back into the
community through designing and implementing programs. Organizations of this type (loosely
categorized) may be involved in advocacy efforts and, in fact, if they were not advocates for
youth they would not be included in our purposive sample. Organizations of this type often
partner with state and philanthropic funders to deliver extensive services; however, their
programs are often centered on the concept of consciousness: the understanding that their
troubles and frustrations have causes outside themselves that they are rooted in the systemic
injustices and deprivations that are inflicted on them by the society around them (Currie
2013b: 6). In contrast to the approaches characteristic of the evidencebased movement, the
programs of social justice organizations are often developed in tandem with the youth (or at
least are subject to youth input); thus they take seriously the importance of Indigenous youth
knowledge for crafting justice and social policy (Cunneen and Rowe 2014).
Chicago Freedom School
Inspired by the original Freedom Schools of the US Civil Rights Movement, Chicago Freedom
School (CFS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 2007
