FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | ONLINE ONLY (VIA ZOOM) | REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Featuring
REUBEN JONATHAN MILLER
Assistant Professor, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, University of Chicago
Author, Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
In conversation with
REVEREND VIVIAN NIXON
Executive Director, College & Community Fellowship (CCF)
Moderated by
BRUCE WESTERN
Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice, Columbia University
Co-director, Justice Lab
ABOUT THE EVENT
At an event sponsored by Columbia University’s Justice Lab, Reuben Jonathan Miller (bio), a chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and now a sociologist studying mass incarceration, will discuss his new and acclaimed book Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration in conversation with the Reverend Vivian Nixon (bio). Justice Lab Co-Director Bruce Western (bio) will moderate the discussion.
Miller based his book on 15 years of research and practice with currently and formerly incarcerated men, women, their families, partners, and friends, weaving their stories into what Publishers Weekly has called a “bracing account [that] makes clear just how high the deck is stacked against the formerly incarcerated.” Praised as a “powerful book” by the New York Times and a “seminal work” by NPR, Halfway Home describes incarceration’s “afterlife”—how a single arrest can follow a person “like a ghost.” It is a poignant and eye-opening call to arms that reveals how laws, rules, and regulations extract a tangible cost not only from those working to rebuild their lives, but also our democracy. As Miller—who is himself the son and brother of incarcerated men—concludes, America must acknowledge and value the lives of its formerly imprisoned citizens.