The first weekend of March 2015, the Criminal Justice Caucus, the Center for Justice at Columbia University and the Beyond the Bars Fellows will host the fifth annual Beyond the Bars Conference.  Over the past four years, the conference has grown immensely, bringing together more and more people from different spaces and places to come together to think critically about how to end the injustices of our criminal justice system, and reimagine what a more just response to harm, accountability and safety could look like.  We continue to be humbled and amazed by the work of all our friends and colleagues and are grateful for your willingness to remain in community as we work towards practicing justice together.

This year’s Beyond the Bars conference will focus on the idea of transformation.  Due to the work of so many of you, people across the country are increasingly aware of the racial, economic and social injustices that have come from what we now call mass incarceration, and what some are beginning to refer to as mass criminalization.  Individuals, communities, organizations, institutions, political bodies and more, are working on changing criminal justice policies across the carceral continuum from policing, to the courts, to the jails and prisons, and to the barriers and conditions for people returning from incarceration.  

The questions this conference will pose are: How do we work towards lasting transformative change? How do we develop a framework for changing the way our country seeks  justice that does not perpetuate the roots of the problems that have led us here? How do we create change that addresses the systemic marginalization vis-a-vis racism, classism, patriarchy and the countless other isms, while also addressing the need for individual accountability and the safety of our communities and our society? What is a transformative agenda for changing the way we seek justice?