Brooklyn Lectures Include Amanda Knox, Criminal Justice Talks

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN, BROOKLYN — The Spring Lecture Series at St. Francis College this year will include criminal justice experts discussing everything from solitary confinement in prisons to the well-known Amanda Knox case.

The lectures, held Tuesdays in room 4202, began this week and will continue into April. They will focus this year on law, media, crime and justice. Each lecture, which college representatives say gain audiences of more than 100, is free and open to the public.

They begin at 11:10 a.m. and include a reception after the talk.

Here's a look at the lectures coming up the next few months:

• Feb. 5: Advocate Bob Gangi on Court Monitoring and the Failure of Broken Windows — Bob Gangi has been a NYC activist, community organizer and public policy advocate for over 40 years.
• Feb. 12: Criminologist David Pitts on Solitary Confinement in America: Causes, Consequences, and Alternatives — David Pitts is a Senior Research Associate in the Center on Sentencing & Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice.
• Feb. 19: Criminologist Nickie Phillips on Tabloid Justice, She-Devils, Femme Fatales, and the Amanda Knox Case — Nickie Phillips (Associate Professor, SFC) discusses the investigation, conviction, and ultimate acquittal of American college student Amanda Knox in the murder of her roommate in Italy.
• Feb. 26: Journalist Lenore Skenazy on Free Range Kids Laws—NYC-based journalist, activist, and founder of the “free-range parenting” movement discusses her experience of being publicly shamed for being the “world’s worst mom.”
• March 5: Criminologist Natasha Frost on Correctional Officer Suicide and Officer Wellbeing—Dr. Frost (Northeastern University) is an expert in punishment and social control.
• March 12: Historian Paula Marie Seniors on African American Women Radical Activists: African American Women & Radical Activism/Self-Defense — Dr. Paula Marie Seniors (Associate Professor of Africana Studies, Virginia Tech) discusses the 1961 case of self-defense advocate Mae Mallory and the Monroe Defense Committee.
• March 26: Downtown Community TV Center: PRO-TV’s NYC youth on teenage homelessness, coping with illnesses, and the difficult lives of young immigrants — PRO-TV is the largest, most honored free media arts training program for youth in New York City.
• April 2: Journalist Debbie Nathan on Humanitarianism at the Border—Debbie Nathan lives in Brownsville, Texas, on the Mexico border, and has been writing about the border and immigration for over three decades.
• April 9: Criminologist Shawn Rolfe on “An Ex-Con Is Not Supposed to be Doing This: Obtaining a Doctorate Degree, Becoming a Scholar and Policy Advocate”— Shawn Rolfe is a former Marine and current Ph.D. candidate in criminal justice at the University of Louisville.
• April 16: Anna Gjika on Technology, Masculinity, and Rape Culture in Adolescent Sexual Assault — Anna Gjika is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests include exploring the relationships between gender, crime, and technology, particularly as they pertain to gendered violence, and institutional responses to this issue.
• April 23: SFC Post-Prison Students on Post-Prison Education & Re-Entry Challenges — The Post-Prison Program at SFC launched in 2014 and students, professors, and community members have found the program to be a triumph among reentry opportunities.

More information about the lectures can be found here.

Photo from GoogleMaps.