Our Featured Projects & Programs
The Paralegal Pathways Initiative (PPI) seeks to amplify the talents and perspectives of those who have directly experienced incarceration in an effort to create economic opportunity for our participants, advance racial equity in the legal field, build knowledge of the impacts of the criminal legal system among current and future legal professionals, and expose the legal profession to an untapped wealth of legal experience and talent. Click here to learn more about this groundbreaking program.
Breakthrough in Abolition Through Transformative Learning Exchange (BATTLE) engages the leadership of formerly-incarcerated individuals in anchoring people-centered systems’ change responses to the impact of mass incarceration and structural racism on the social and economic infrastructure of marginalized communities. Click here to learn more about this innovative program.
This Spring 2021 course and practicum, the first of its kind, will enable participants to blend artistry, law, policy, and community engagement, and in this way to produce narratives with powerful impact in policy spaces where change can happen. The course will equip law students to tell powerful stories--themselves and in collaboration with artists and community members--and use legal knowledge and skills to amplify artists’ and community activists’ impact in venues where laws are made and power is exercised. The workshop will also build artists’ capacity to merge high quality, high impact, rigorous artistry with community narratives and research & high level policy activists. In the process all the participants will work with community members to amplify the power of their stories through artistry informed by legal and policy research. With criminal justice and education as the policy focal point, the workshop will enable participants to craft and enact compelling stories about justice and injustice in “theaters for change” where they can shift hearts and minds of thought leaders and policy makers. Click here to learn more about the course and how to apply.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its tragic spread through carceral institutions and the country, Columbia Law School's Center for Institutional and Social Change, UCLA Law School's COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project, The Bronx Defenders, and Zealous are announcing the official launch of the Health is Justice litigation hub, a new resource specifically intended for lawyers, advocates, journalists, and others who share the interest of challenging, remedying, and drawing attention to the grave risk that COVID-19 poses to people in detention. The litigation hub is a component of Health is Justice, a broader advocacy project that aims to decarcerate and replace punishment with public health. Click here to learn more about the project, and how to get involved.
News
The Confined Arts Awarded Grant to Launch “Claiming the Visual Narrative”
Newark, NJ— The Drug Policy Program of the Open Society Foundations has awarded The Confined Arts a grant for the Claiming the Visual Narrative Public Arts Project. The purpose of the grant is to counter the racist narratives of the drug war through artistic collaboration in New Jersey.
Clifford Chance chooses the Center for Institutional and Social Change as winner of the 2021 Racial Justice Award
Leading international law firm Clifford Chance has named Columbia Law School's Center for Institutional and Social Change as the winner of its Racial Justice Award.
Columbia Law Students Respond to COVID-19 With Pro Bono Projects
Read about what Columbia Law students and our own center is doing for pro bono efforts in the wake of COVID-19. To access the full article, click here.