What role do prisons serve in our country? Is it possible to envision a world where people are safe and secure, and where there is accountability, without prisons? Does our prison system, in some cases, actually cause rather than reduce crime? After a brief multimedia history of prisons and alternative justice systems, Walidah Imarisha, author and adjunct professor in Portland State University’s department of Black studies, leads a conversation about alternatives to incarceration. Walidah Imarisha has taught in Portland State University’s Black studies department, where she has created classes about topics as diverse as the history of the Black Panther Party, race and the history of prisons, Hurricane Katrina, and hip hop as literature. She has facilitated writing workshops, for students in third grade to twelfth, in community centers, youth detention facilities, and women’s prisons. Imarisha was a founding editor of AWOL, a national political hip hop magazine. She has toured nationally and internationally as part of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista. Imarisha has been featured on several hip hop CDs, and her work was anthologized in Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop. Imarisha also filmed and codirected Finding Common Ground in New Orleans, a documentary about Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.
