March Virtual Lunch & Learn

By the time most people enter the criminal legal system, they have been shaped by environments focused on survival rather than navigation into mainstream society. Rather than learning how to engage with society in ways that build connection and trust, focusing on survival requires you to retreat to hidden spaces outside of the mainstream view.

This discussion explores how survival skills learned in hidden spaces (the alleys) often conflict with expectations of the “street”; (the real world). In the alleys, you don’t learn how systems work, you learn how to get around them. You don’t learn to vocalize your pain and trauma, you learn how to react to it. Our panelists today will examine how the current sentencing system often focuses on punishing the consequences of survial-based behavior rather than addressing root causes.