Fourth Annual Workshop

SPRING 2015 / APRIL 25, 2015

RACIAL INJUSTICE:

ADDRESSING RACIAL DISPARITIES IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Featured Guest, Andy Morikawa

Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance Fellow and Race and Social Policy Research Center Associate

Andy Morikawa serves as a trustee on the boards of local, regional and international change nonprofits. He hosts a podcast, Trustees Without Borders; and serves on the organizing bodies of Community Voices, the Dialogue on Race, and Conversations NRV.

Featured Speaker, Wornie Reed

Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies and

Director of the Race and Social Policy Research Center at Virginia Tech

Professor Reed has taught courses, conducted research, and published numerous articles and several books on medical care, health and illness, urban communities, and criminal and juvenile justice. He serves on the Steering Committee of the Montgomery County Dialogue on Race.

Featured Guest, Stories from South Central

Stories from South Central is an all-volunteer prisoner support group based in southern West Virginia. Founded initially to investigate and tell the story of those incarcerated in Charleston's South Central Regional Jail who were forced to drink contaminated water in the wake of the January 2014 MCHM spill, Stories has evolved to provide long-term support for people locked up across the state of West Virginia. Among other actions, they operate a 7-day-a-week hotline accepting collect calls from jails and prisons, visit and write numerous inmates, attend trials and other court dates upon request, and collaborate with prisoners to advocate for improved conditions of confinement. They also operate a website, www.storiesfromsouthcentralwv.com, providing a forum for prisoners to publicly share experiences of incarceration in their own words.