USC’s Rule of Law Collaborative opened a discussion on tensions between African-American communities and police officers with a day-long symposium on Friday.
The conference, entitled “Bridging the Divide: African-American Communities and Law Enforcement,” brought together social and human rights activists, police chiefs and academics from across the world to discuss the underlying issues that create division and to address the potential solution of restorative justice.
“This is a pretty unique event,” said Joel Samuels, director of the Rule of Law Collaborative. “There aren’t a lot of conversations that bring in the restorative justice approach and particularly the international experience on this sort of justice into this question.”
The symposium began with a panel on the root causes of the challenges faced by African-American communities and law enforcement, before proposing restorative justice as a way of mending relations and discussing possible methods by which restorative justice may be implemented in the United States.
The basic principle of restorative justice focuses on rectifying the harms caused by crime and increasing community engagement, especially with law enforcement. The panelists placed great emphasis on improved community relations.
“I think we’re working for a vision of justice that says at its core that it’s about just relationships,” said Jennifer Llewellyn, professor of law at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University.
Chief Hank Stawinski, police chief of Prince George’s County in Maryland, also weighed in on the importance of increasing the community’s role in the justice system: “Our goal was to build the capacity of communities to advocate for themselves.”
A key theme was the current issues that the United States faces with community-police relations. Stephen White, senior research fellow at the Global Center for Cooperative Security, offered insight on rebuilding those relations from his experience as a police officer in Northern Ireland.
“It’s about listening to what has caused the hurt, what has caused the damage, what is the problem that needs to be addressed," White said.
In addition to the questions from the moderator, members of the panels took questions and comments from those in attendance on topics such as police brutality, Black Lives Matter and crime rates in African-American communities.
“It’s important to have the community at large involved in the discussion,” said Anthony Triolo, senior external relations officer at the Rule of Law Collaborative and the primary organizer of the event. He added that the conference was intended to create a “forum for having constructive dialogue.”