Correctional safety has historically been rooted in control. This has led to an ongoing failure to address trauma and realize long-term safety. We need to shift our idea of safety to one that creates the conditions for all community members to be and feel protected, resilient, and whole. That is holistic safety.
In this session, Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia, psychologist and former Cook County jail warden, will relay a unified vision of safety built alongside 100+ people with lived experience of the carceral system, including a tangible framework to guide policy change and strategies to empower staff and people incarcerated in reform. Concepts will be brought to life through stories of implementing the first-ever contact visitation program at Cook County jail. Participants should leave inspired by a new framework to analyze and shift institutional policies and practices through in order to sustainably improve safety alongside people with lived experience.
BSWAC members are academics, researchers, higher education students, practitioners affiliated within the social justice space, and ex-incarcerated individuals.The lived experience of people with criminal justice history has been largely omitted by policymakers, making the BSWAC unique to other advisory organizations in the social justice space. This paper discusses the challenges and benefits in the set up of the BSWAC.
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Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia
Managing Director of Justice Initiatives, Chicago Beyond, USA
Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia is the Managing Director for Justice Initiatives at Chicago Beyond. She is an experienced psychologist who is passionate about mental wellness, criminal justice reform, and supporting young people who have experienced trauma. Since joining Chicago Beyond in 2018, Dr. Tapia collaborated to launch programs focused on positive family engagement for families who are justice-involved, holistic healing supports within Chicago Public Schools and peer-led healing supports for youth. She is the former warden of Cook County jail in Chicago, Illinois - one of the largest single site jails in the country. Under her leadership, Cook County jail implemented several bold strategies to promote wellness and to reduce recidivism, including the Mental Health Transition Center, a program that has helped hundreds of people who have been incarcerated to successfully reenter their families and communities.
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Khalil A. Cumberbatch
Director, Strategic Partnerships, Council on Criminal Justice, USA
Khalil A. Cumberbatch is a nationally recognized formerly incarcerated advocate for criminal justice and deportation policy change. His advocacy work begun in 2010 shortly after his release from serving almost seven years in the NYS prison system. Khalil currently serves as Senior Fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice. Most recently, he served as Chief Strategist at New Yorkers United for Justice , where he maintains the role of Senior Advisor. Prior to NYUJ, he served as Associate Vice President of Policy at the Fortune Society, a reentry organization whose goal is to build people and not prisons. He is also a lecturer at Columbia University School of Social Work, the nation’s oldest school of social work, with roots extending back to 1898. Khalil graduated from CUNY Herbert Lehman College’s MSW program in May 2014, where he was awarded the Urban Justice Award for his work with underserved and marginalized communities that are negatively impacted by mass incarceration as well as poverty, high unemployment rates, lack of access to quality education, and other ineffective social “safety nets”. In December 2014, Khalil was one of two recipients to receive an Executive Pardon from NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo to prevent his deportation from the United States.
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Thomas Schoolcraft
Transitions Coordinator, Minnesota Department of Corrections, USA
Tom left high school in the 9th grade and was arrested for burglary in NH and MA in 2004, the week after his 19th birthday. He was sentenced to a year in jail and was less than optimistic about building a successful life as a convicted felon. He returned to jail in 2009 as a volunteer because he wanted to give back and help show those incarcerated that there is in fact hope. Tom graduated from Keene State College with a BA in Psychology in 2011 and was hired by the superintendent of the county jail he volunteered at as a corrections officer. He went on to complete a Master’s in criminal justice from Boston University in 2015. He was pardoned by the governor of Massachusetts that same year and was granted an annulment in NH in 2016. He currently works in reentry for the Minnesota Department of Corrections at their only maximum-security prison as well as the historic Stillwater Prison. Tom’s personal and professional experience has led him to believe the “Us vs. them” culture between inmates and officers is both unnecessary and dangerous. He hopes to spark a conversation that will change the way officers and inmates perceive each other, to make prison a safe space for everyone in it.
