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The U.S. locks up more of its citizens than any other country, and politicians across the spectrum continue to insist on ‘tough-on-crime’ policies.   Dr. Marc M. Howard, Professor of Government and Law at Georgetown, and Martin Tankleff, a New York State criminal defense attorney, will discuss the impact of mass incarceration on American society and democracy.  Howard and Tankleff are childhood friends whose paths diverged–one went to Yale, the other to jail—until their current partnership combating injustice and working for prison reform. Dr. Howard’s most recent book is Unusually Cruel: Prisons, Punishment, and the Real American Exceptionalism (2017); he directs Georgetown’s Prisons and Justice Initiative.  Mr. Tankleff was wrongfully convicted of murdering his parents on the first day of his senior year in high school, and he served almost 18 years of a 50-years-to-life prison sentence before being exonerated in 2007.  An open discussion with audience members will follow their presentations.

October 19, 5:00-6:30 | Madison Hall (Admissions Office Building) 1001